The Goodwood Festival of Speed, or 'FOS', as it's commonly known by seasoned attendees, can best be described as, 'The world's greatest celebration of motorsport and car culture! Held in the beautiful parkland surrounding Goodwood House, the Festival of Speed is motorsport's ultimate summer garden party, an intoxicating celebration of the world's most glamorous sport. Nowhere else will you get so close to the cars and bikes as they blast up the Hillclimb track, and nowhere else will you enjoy such unrestricted access to the machines and the drivers who made them famous.
The action really takes place on the driveway to the beautiful Goodwood House. Over three days anything and everything from NASCAR, Formula One, WRC, MotoGP, and supercar dynamic debuts battle it out to see who will be the fastest up the 1.16-mile hill. It simply is a collection of machinery and racing personalities unlike any other in the world.
FOS Has Been Around For Almost Thirty Years But It Wasn't Always The Glamorous Spectacle It Is Today. It Started Very Ingloriously In 1993
Goodwood and motorsport have seemingly always been synonymous pairing in the motoring world. Since 1948 racing legends and their cars have been coming to the small city of Chichester, West Sussex in the UK, to compete on the Goodwood Motor Circuit, where non-championship Formula One races and sports car races, with the likes of drivers such as Stirling Moss, John Surtees, and Jim Clark were held until the track's closure in 1966. Now it hosts the largest annual historic racing event in the world, The Goodwood Revival. But it is not the circuit where the Festival of Speed is held. That happens just up the road on the grounds of Goodwood House. The main event of the FOS weekend is the Hillclimb challenge, which starts at the bottom of the driveway. The very first Hillclimb event held at Goodwood actually happened in 1936 when Freddie March, the 9th Duke of Richmond, hosted the Lancia Car Club for a private event. It would be almost sixty years later when his grandson, the current Earl of March would launch the very first Festival of Speed in 1993.
Motorsport had been vacant from Goodwood for over a quarter of a century before the very first Festival of Speed brought the spark back. In the early '90s, the festival was not nearly the spectacle it has become today. After Nick the Shepherd had rounded up the sheep from the grounds, the employees of the estate built a rudimentary startline gantry, lined the driveway with rope and straw bales, and set up some marquees in case of bad weather. The famous central display was just an Aston Martin DB7 on a plinth, primitive when compared to some of the more recent installations. Only 2,000 people were expected to attend, but closer to 25,000 came over the then two-day event. Official tickets were all gone by midday Sunday 20th June, so cloakroom tickets were handed out instead, and staff and volunteers collected cash in plastic bags and handbags borrowed from wives and girlfriends. The fastest run of the weekend was set by Willie Green in a Surtees TS20 with a time of 56.34.
If It Wasn't For A Book, Then Perhaps It Would Never Have Been
Way before 1993, the seed of motorsport was planted in a young Earl of March by his grandmother. She thought it important for him to share an interest with his Grandfather, so sent him books about cars. It was 'The Automobile Book' by Ralph Stein that captured the interest in motoring for the young Earl. It was many years later in the early '90s when a chance meeting with Ian Bax from the British Automobile Racing Club that he realized he could bring racing back to Goodwood. It would have proved too long and complex to reopen the circuit so a plan for a competitive event in the park was envisaged. Having recently become the President of the British Automobile Racing Club, who ran the racing at the circuit from 1948 to 1966, the Earl began talking to owners and drivers he knew to drum up interest in bringing cars and bikes to a possible event. With the backing of Dennis Carter, the head of the Racing Club, and FIA Safety Inspector Derek Ongaro the 'Festival of Speed' was suddenly becoming a reality.
Come October 1992, the event was decided upon, and with just eight months until the launch of the very first Festival of Speed, there was the task of sourcing all the cars, motorbikes, drivers, and riders. Stirling Moss, John Surtees, and Damon Hill were enlisted as Patrons, and sponsorship from Aston Martin, Citroën, and Honda made the event possible. Surtees's experience with motorcycles proved priceless as he set about scoring the very best machinery to compete.
With the success of the first event, the Festival of Speed grew bigger and better every year, and now almost thirty years later we are seeing the return of the event after its cancellation in 2020. The Festival's rich history and that of motorsport at Goodwood is something that isn't matched anywhere in the world, and it is a truly special thing to attend the events that the Goodwood estate put on. There is a certain magic about the place that supercharges our love of racing machinery, and to be able to share that with hundreds of thousands of other people is beautiful. And so, in the words of British racing driver, Roy Salvadori, 'Give me Goodwood on a summer's day and you can forget the rest of the world.'