Team Locals

For the first time we were invited along to experience the festival of speed in ground of Goodwood Estate in Chichester, West Sussex. Was the hour and a half traffic jam wait worth it?

We know it’s no Portsmouth & Southsea but we wanted to investigate what made this event so successful and harvest some elements for future events in our great city.

Any event that gives an ‘Unavoidable Accidents Can Happen’ warning on their tickets is a definite must for us!

We seemed to be standing in the perfect spots all day yesterday at the festival as we got to see the Jubilee celebration inspired Royal cavalcade of vintage cars with H.R.H. Duke of Kent arrive in front of the house, Sebastian Vettel performing his impromptu doughnut spins in front of us and Jenson Button doing some autograph signing after his F1 hill climb.

The festival has an amazing atmosphere and wasn’t what we were expecting at all. It’s very open and obviously utilises a massive area of the grounds making it seem busy yet open with plenty of spaces to escape, site and relax as the cars add a constant background roar as they speed up the hill climb throughout the day.

180,000 people are expected to attend the event over the 3 days open to the public but it certainly doesn’t feel overcrowded and you get to view, touch and take in all the cars on show with no pressure.

Our highlight of the day was definitely getting to see all the F1 stars who were enjoying a weekend of in-between the European Grand prix & the British Grand prix at Silverstone.

Jenson Button, Sebastian Vettel & Lewis Hamilton all turned out as well as being accompanied by classic racers & world champions Emerson Fittipaldi, Alain Prost, John Surtees, Sir Jackie Stewart and Damon Hill.

Alain Prost on the hill climb reunited with his Championship winning car.

Lewis even brought along on/off partner Nicole Scherzinger to add a little more glamour to the day.

Check out Sebastian Vettel below performing his doughnuts in the Redbull Infiniti FX Vettel Edition in front of a cheering crowd.

We also saw legend, Sir Stirling Moss, reunited with his race car roar up the hill in front of cheering crowds. Sterling told Goodwood ‘I always have a great time at the event. Everybody is so friendly and it’s a wonderful occasion. We couldn’t agree more with him.

Other highlights of the day were getting to see the Bentley Sir Henry “Tim” Birkin’s 4½ Litre Supercharged “Blower” single-seat racing car reaching a price of £5 million when auctioned by Bonhams during the Goodwood Festival of Speed yesterday!

It’s a lovely looking vintage piece of history but seriously, £5 million? Someone had some serious money to burn. I wonder if they will evey get to drive it or it will just be packed up into an air pressure controlled, environment controlled glass room.

The only low point of the day for us was that there wasn’t enough food-stalls and 2 companies in particular seemed to have the monopoly on the event with one company Devine (the name is not appropriate for the food) having 3 or 4 stalls in a row, all serving the same very low quality junk food. The other was Goodwood’s very own food stalls whose quality was no doubt better but we had to pay £10 for a cheeseburger! Advice – unlike us, take a picnic!

And true to their word as seen on the back of tickets ‘Motor Sports’ REALLY can be dangerous, as in the last hill climb event of the day one of the super-cars left the track, spinning into the hay bails. Luckily no-one in the crowd was injured and both driver plus passenger are ok. Thanks for the heads up Goodwood, phew……………oh and yes the 1-2 hour traffic jam was worth it!