Goodwood FoS: Pt.3 - Trackside

At the end of the last post I had three hours to kill before Jenson Button appeared on the Mercedes stage. I wasn’t all too fussed about that actually, I only wanted to go because you don’t see Formula 1 drivers every day and I actually knew he was going to be there rather than chancing a meeting in the paddock.

It was 12pm and I was starting to get hungry. I headed to the concessions to check out the prices. £5.50 for a basic burger, £7 for a decent one. I take the packet of McCoys crisps from my bag and walk on in search of an event programme.

You need a programme at Goodwood because without it you don’t know when to get trackside, and you don’t have a hope of planning your whereabouts to coincide with drivers arriving/departing the paddock. Relieved of £12, but given a ‘free’ radio (ok I’m paying for it, just tell me I am, yeah?) and another magazine about the people attending, I immediately thumb the programme to figure out what to do next: go to the track, then explore paddock. The programme seller was positioned between gaps in hospitality marquees so I got my first good look at this year’s sculpture.

Audi Sculpture, Goodwood House, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

I cross the bridge and immediately spot celebrity chef and 2008 Mille Miglia entrant James Martin signing autographs. I choose not to do same, or even get a photo, because I don’t care about James Martin.

Cars are starting to run up the hill again now so I take up station by the bridge to watch – this is the sportscar section and I want to see the new Audi, Peugeot and Aston in the flesh! First though, a massive group of Porsches. I’m sure if you were a fan in their era you would have found this section riveting, and they did look and sound great, but really.. there were a LOT of them.

1969 Porsche 917K, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

One of the drawbacks at Goodwood is the need to rub elbows to get anything like a decent view if you are not in a grandstand. The covered grandstands cost a fortune, though there are freely available open grandstands dotted around the place – unfortunately not in this location. This meant trying to peer around the side of the people next to you, who were trying to do the same to the people next to them! When they stay back you can get a really good view.

Finally the new cars arrived! You can see the Pug in the set of four above, it wasn't a good photo unfortunately - you couldn't hear it coming so it was a rush job!
The Aston shot was much better.

2009 Lola Aston Martin LMP1, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

And by this time I'd practised so when the near-silent Audi R15 appeared I was ready.

From 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

Little did I know I would have a closer encounter with the Audi later.

On The Limit: Goodwood Fos Pt.2

As I said yesterday, following the bikes were the modern Formula 1 cars.

I managed to get a video, just a short one, but I'm pretty pleased with it. Turn it up!!


Marc Gene, Ferrari F2008

Goodwood FoS: Pt.2 - F1

Directly after the classic racing bikes were a small group of modern era Formula 1 cars. No 2009 cars are allowed to take part in the Festival runs due to this season's test ban regulations, and the running here would bizarrely count as testing and as the track commentator said, quite what they would learn doing burnouts up a 1.1-mile narrow lane remains unanswered. The F1 teams had to run older cars instead, most choosing 2008 versions with Red Bull running a 2006 Toro Rosso in a current Red Bull Racing livery. BrawnGP were the only team to bring a 2009-spec car which remained on static display in the main paddock - they claimed it is the same chassis that will appear in Germany this weekend but I think that's PR guff. Despite this minor setback the drivers put on an excellent show, notable Timo Glock who was doing burnouts galore and getting his car sideways throughout his runs!

Timo Glock, Toyota TF108, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

David Coulthard took the morning run for Red Bull before taking the helicopter to Wimbledon where he was spotted on TV that afternoon. Interestingly, his motorhome was seen at the Renault World Series event at Silverstone.

David Coulthard, 2006 Red Bull STR1, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

Also running on Sunday were Marc Gene in a Ferrari F2008, and some guy called Pierangelo Masselli in a Ferrari F300 of 1998. I got a photo of the '98 car, and a video of the '08 car which I'll keep back for now. ;-)

Ferrari F300, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

Needless to say all of these cars were very loud and very energetic! I'm not sure if my hearing is going and it probably is after attending events like this, but they did seem a little quieter than usual, it's probably me though. There was a definite difference in sound between the 2008 cars and the Red Bull and earlier Ferrari, which were both more shrill and peaky with their higher-revving engines. Once the cars had departed I headed into the infield to have a wander around, not really sure where to go next. I elected to locate some lunch and was surprised to find they were charging £5.50 for a burger!! A bit of meat in two bits of bread. Okay so it was top organic stuff from their own farm, with a fresh salad in it instead of the muck from McD's, but still, there's a principle at stake here. You don't pay that for a burger. So I stuck to my packet of crisps and head to the Mercedes stand because I'd heard they were bringing the new SLR Stirling Moss Edition. Sure enough, they had!

SLRs past and present, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

I adore this car. They'd placed it next to the SLR of the type Moss had driven in events such as the Mille Miglia in the 1950s. The similarities are striking, yet the new car is unmistakebly modern. I have no idea how they did it. Several other Mercedes were on display of course, but I wasn't that interested - what did catch my eye were the signs proclaiming Jenson Button's interview session in this very pavilion at 3pm, so I decided I should have to come back for that. I had three hours to kill.

On The Limit - Goodwood FoS Pt.1a

I haven’t posted an ‘On The Limit’ for a while – and now I get to do several because I managed to take some very short videos at Goodwood!

I’m not saying they are brilliant, they are just your average fan videos, but they are mine and my first ever video uploads, so I’m going to show them off.

As mentioned previously, the motorbikes were the first batch I saw when I arrived - here is one of the first bikes to depart:

(John Hogan on Barry Sheene's Suzuki)

Here is a somewhat more modern superbike:

(unknown)

I'll continue the review over the weekend and insert the odd little video here and there!

Goodwood FoS: Pt.1 – Arrival & Bikes

The Goodwood Festival of Speed is a massive event, it is very difficult to cover the entire area in a single day, but just about manageable if you are quick. I attended on Sunday only, arriving 45m later than planned due to a combination of my own slow movement away from the house (I was unprepared!) and the slow traffic on the roads during the 2hr 15m journey.

Suitably chastising myself, I collected my pre-booked ticket at the gate just as the Red Arrows arrived at about 11am.

Red Arrows, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

I would have taken better pics but for the decision for safety reasons to hold the air display area over the car park rather than directly above the venue, thus meaning almost the entire display was obscured by trees! I’m sure it looked great to those near the House or on the cricket pitch, for those of us at the start line it was rubbish.

As the air display was coming to a close the next batch of vehicles arrived at the start line, to this day I have no idea why these two classes were batched together: classic motorcycles and current F1 cars. Wow, F1 cars straight away, great luck.

While everyone was in the infield being distracted by the planes I grabbed a space trackside at the start line. I hung around during the motorbike runs to keep the spot. I’m not really into the classic ‘bikes, I don’t know anything at all about them and I didn’t recognise a single machine what with no MotoGP presence - though I did recognise the names Mick Doohan and Carlos Checa when the announcement came that they were running (AFTER they'd left the start) – so imagine my surprise when I looked at the second bike lining up to make a run and recognised the rider!

John Surtees, the only World Champion on two wheels and four, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

John Surtees is a frail old man these days of course, and he was struggling to keep himself upright which was sad to see – until he was released on to the track, when he took off like a rocket! He was really going for it, absolutely brilliant. I'd not taken much notice of Surtees previously - here I became an instant fan.

All sorts of racing motorbikes from the 1960s to the present day followed him up the hill, including modern endurance bikes and classic sidecars. As I say, I’m not a huge fan so I didn’t get a lot of photos, for those I did get check out my FoS gallery.

I did manage to grab a quick couple of videos though.

Following the final bike was Peter Fonda, the actor from the movie 'Easy Rider' which is 40 years old this year. I actually haven't seen the film so this passed me by a bit, but Mum had already told me to look out for him.

Peter Fonda, from 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

I am writing this as a journal of the day and already we can see these posts are going to be photo- and video-heavy rather than covering a lot of words, so I think it would be a good idea to spread out the content over several posts. You can jump ahead of me if you like by checking out my photos here. In the next instalment: F1 cars!

All photos and videos © Patrick Wotton.

Photos from Goodwood Festival of Speed 2009

Goodwood on Sunday was fantastic!

From 2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

I have uploaded 319 photos of various quality from the day, you may view them here, if you so choose:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/PatrickWotton/2009GoodwoodFestivalOfSpeed#

I had a fantastic day which capped a great weekend, and I was well and truly shattered at the end of it, so tired! Absolutely 100% worth it though and I recommend the event to anybody (with a few caveats - more on that another time).

As you will have hopefully seen on my Twitter feed or in the photoset above I got photos of Stirling Moss, John Surtees, Jenson Button, Jay Leno, Jesse James and a huge number of classic, priceless racing cars. I'll tell you all about it as soon as I can sit down to write the posts! That's a plural because I may do a large post or several smaller updates, I need to work out which will work better.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy the photos, and I'll also point you in the direction of first-time attendee Lukeh who's blog post sums it up perfectly. I'll link to more people's blogs/photos in future entries.

2009 Goodwood Festival of Speed

Tomorrow I will be attending the Goodwood Festival of Speed for the 3rd time.

I had been considering it for a while and had pretty much decided against it until midweek, when I realised I urgently needed - yes needed - to get to a motorsport event, not having been to one since September. Luckily the tickets were still available on Thursday morning (is this normal or are sales slow?) so this is a very last-minute decision but one I don't regret at all.

I will be attempting to tweet comments during the day to @TooMuchRacing but this will very much depend on the phone signals. There will be a lot of people in one place in a rural area so the network may get overloaded, in which case you'll have to wait for me to upload pics from my camera when I get home tomorrow night (don't tweet and drive, kids).

In the meantime, feel free to enjoy my photos from 2002 and 2003 visits in my Picasa album. I am not claiming they are masterpieces but I hope they give a flavour of the event!

I'll probably be fairly incognito not being one to shout about myself, and I'll be attending as a fan rather than trying to get any media access as many bloggers do - so this blogger will be deploying in stealth mode. Not to mention I have nothing to identify myself as TooMuchRacing other than telling people. I intend to have a busy yet relaxed day, if possible.

Will blog upon my return!