Via a night on Chelsea, we turned up at Goodwood, (08.30), on 2nd July to enjoy our first 'Festival of Speed', ('we' being John Phillpotts, Michael Midgley and yours truly).
As we walked up to catch the tractor/trailer to the top of the Hill Climb (the finish and where the rallying was taking place) we passed this little beauty! Red Bull's awesome F! car.
The 50th anniversary of the Jaguar E-type was marked with an jaw-dropping 28 metre-high sculpture of this most iconic of British sports cars.
Saw a Lotus 88 (*see footnote) - wonderful - what a car? On Saturday I saw it do 51.84 secs. But the 2011 Festival highlight was Sunday’s thrilling Top Ten timed shoot-out finale against the clock, with Dan Collins bringing this year’s event to a stirring conclusion with an epic performance in his Lotus 88B. He cut the timing beam at just 48.52 seconds!
The 2011 Festival of Speed had the largest celebration of Indy Cars outside of Indiana - to honour the centenary of the Indianapolis 500. Drivers present included the winners of the last five Indy 500 races, not least the 2011 Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon and Dario Franchitti, driving the Lotus 38 that Jim Clark drove to second place in the 1966 race. They even had a few Indy bricks at the start to remind of the brickyard.
Jenson Button appeared on the 1.16-mile Goodwood hill climb, driving the McLaren MP4-12C - pretty impressive! Photo from www.carsuk.net
At the Lotus stand I managed to get a Lotus baseball cap - got to keep the sun off my head! When Roger (Jones) caught up with us, on the Mercedes stand, he suggested we strolled over to see the Alpha exhibition as we would be knocked out by the Alpha 4C - to be launched next year.
Well - judge for yourselves but I thought it stunning! Looks like the skin is tactile - maybe shark-like - it's carbon fibre. You can see the penmanship of the Alpha Romeo 8C in this I think. Gorgeous - and next year - yours for 40k
It was at this point cars were forgotten as some really loud noise from above told us the Red Arrows had turned up in their BAE Systems Hawk T1s ...
They could fly alright, (I suppose you expect that, but ... well, words fail) ...
However .. words didn't fail Michael as we tried to walk past some American motorbikes ... he kept mumbling Dukes of Hazard or something ...
We saw Stirling Moss - recovered from breaking both ankles, four bones in a foot, chipping four vertebrae not to mention the skin damage in an accident at his home when he fell down a lift shaft! He was driving a Ferguson Climax P99 - the only 4WD F1 and the last to win with a front engine (to date!).
John Surtees came up the hill in a Mercedes W165 - v. nice. It had only one outing - the Tripoli Grand Prix 1939, where it was driven to victory ' class - by Hermann Lang. It was a V8 1.5 litre (the Italians introduced this, the 'Voiturette' - half the size of the V12 3 litre monsters - to try to ensure they won the next GP season! Oh dear! They didn't reckon on the Silver Arrows and Mercedes Benz!).
On the hill climb this car gained a lot of attention - and it is only a Nissan Juke (whatever that is?) ... must be the way it was driven ... on two wheels almost literally the whole hill climb. Remarkable.
All in all a great day ... thoroughly enjoyed it. Michael & I drove back after dropping John off at Heathrow, to get into Central London. PS Day before John picked me up in this ...
*Footnote on the Lotus 88. The 88 used an ingenious system of having a twin chassis, one inside the other. The inner chassis would hold the cockpit and would be independently sprung from the outer one, which was designed to take the pressures of the ground effects. The outer chassis did not have discernible wings, and was in effect one huge ground effect system, beginning just behind the nose of the car and extending all the way inside the rear wheels, thereby producing massive amounts of downforce. The car was powered by the Ford Cosworth DFV engine. Lotus drivers Nigel Mansell and Elio de Angelis reported the car was pleasing to drive and responsive. To make the aerodynamic loads as manageable as possible, the car was constructed extensively in carbon fibre, making it along with the McLaren MP4/1 the first car to use the material in large quantity. Other teams were outraged at this exploitation of the regulations and protests were lodged with the FIA, on the grounds that the twin chassis tub breached the rules in terms of moveable aerodynamic devices. The FIA upheld the protests and consequently banned the car from competing.
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