The Goodwood Festival of Speed is one of those events that should need no introduction.

Described as a ‘motoring garden party’, the Festival of Speed is a three-day extravaganza showing off classic cars, purebred racing machines, and whatever the manufacturers feel like publicising that summer. Below are some of the highlights from the 2010 Festival of Speed.

In 1936, the Earl of March hosted the first Goodwood hillclimb, little knowing that he was sowing the seeds of the Festival of Speed in the process. Since 1993, his grandson, the current Earl of March, has welcomed British petrolheads to the grounds of the Goodwood estate, where 150,000 people a year spend the weekend photographing a seemingly endless stream of cars.

Each year the organisers choose a theme, and cars are invited based on their adherence to that theme. This year’s will be ‘Racing Revolutions – Quantum leaps that shaped motor sport’, which according to the website means “celebrating the ceaseless quest for increased power; greater efficiency; more speed. From motor racing’s pioneering early days, engineering ingenuity has been the irresistible force behind the sport’s inexorable rise, with designers constantly pushing technical boundaries in search of ‘the unfair advantage’.”

Expect to see turbo-era F1 cars, ground-breaking four-wheel drive rally cars, and grand prix machines from the early days of rear engines.

Goodwood is about celebrating motoring in its entirety – making the most of the misses, as well as the greatest hits. In keeping with that spirit, the organisers say, “it is therefore especially fitting to celebrate the innovations – both giant strides and iterative evolutions; masterstrokes and blind alleys – that have seen the racing automobile develop from crude behemoth to space-age projectile.”

Cars old and new take to the famous hillclimb, which sees legendary cars from every era of motoring power up the 1.6 mile course with fans only metres away on the other side of protective straw bales. This video of F1 cars tackling the hillclimb is a long one, but worth watching in its entirety. Some of the cars shown are real classics.

Another Goodwood highlight is the forest rally stage, a specially-designed loose-surface course designed to test machines old and new.

But the real delight of Goodwood is the way there’s always something new to see, even when you think you’ve covered all the ground there is. A lucky paddock arrival can see you running away from an RB6 looking to park, or chatting Delages with a man who owns several. Kate Walker

Worth Checking -  F1 News - Kate Walkers F1 blog

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Comments (1)

• |2011-05-01 22:28:30 Walter Jamieson Jr
  Wonderful hillclimb footage! Thank you. Without elapsed times showing for all the cars, it was hard to tell which were going fastest. Perhaps it was an illusion of some sort, but the third or fourth car to make the run, Ferrari F-60, driven by Marc Gene, looked like it was going faster than the others. Would you know? Very impressive that these spectacular older cars are taken to this event and really participate.
  But where was the clip of you chatting with the owner of several Delages and getting out of the way of the RB6?
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• |2011-05-07 00:15:07 Kate
  I'm afraid there's no video of that!
  
  I thought I'd kept all of my press releases from last year's FOS, but they're not where I thought they were so I'm afraid I don't have any of the times to hand.
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