CAR magazine is reporting live from the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2014 – and we’ll be updating this page with photos, news and snippets from Goodwood House and the famous hillclimb. Come back for updates from 26-29 June 2014, as we cover some of the flavour of the greatest British motor show.
Mercedes-Benz is the title sponsor at the Festival of Speed in 2014 – and so gets bragging rights to commission the Gerry Judah-designed sculpture outside Goodwood House. The car maker is marking 120 years of motorsport invovlement, and its installation reflects the stretch of its racing – with racers ancient and modern on a simple parabola, arcing over Lord March’s home. It’s simple, effective and utterly compelling. It’ll go down as one of the great Goodwood FOS sculptures, we reckon.
A Ferrari F12 Berlinetta streaks up the Goodwood hillclimb during the Moving Motor Show. The latest addition to the Festival of Speed is the Thursday, when punters and lucky prospects get the chance to drive up the hill. The festival proper kicks off on Friday – Goodwood like Glastonbury – but the week is stretching earlier and earlier.
The brains behind Goodwood, the Earl of March (left) joins sponsor the AA’s Chris Jansen to start the Moving Motor Show on Thursday morning. Goodwood claims it’s the biggest Moving Motor Show yet – and it’s a chance for the public to drive cars not yet in showrooms – including the Citroen C4 Cactus.
Away from the Moving Motor Show, the grounds of Goodwood House are bristling with exotica. This Martini-liveried Porsche 911 is salient; check out Ferry Porsche’s quote in the background – ‘The last car ever built will be a sports car.’ We hope so, too…
It’s the wonderful juxtaposition of old and new that makes the Festival of Speed so special.
Maserati is holding a warm-up centenary celebration at Goodwood this weekend, ahead of the full birthday party in Moden on 18 September 2014. This photo says it all really: an English rose garden, a beautiful Maserati and a be-blazered gentleman…
In between runs up the hill, pedestrians gather to cross the hillclimb. The crowds on Thursday weren’t too bad, ahead of the weekend crush.
Join David Coulthard on a hot run up the hill at the Festival of Speed in our video above. His sprint in a Mercedes SLS Black Series shows you how hairy a blat up the hill can be in a modern supercar!
Wander over to the Porsche stand and you’ll get an eyeful of the – ultimately unsuccessful – 919 Hybrid, fresh from its pummelling at Le Mans. It’s close-up access to our motorsport heroes like this which sets Goodwood apart. The sheer breadth of race disciplines together under one metaphorical roof continues to impress.
At the end of the Moving Motor Show on Thursday evening, a fireworks celebration marked the official launch of the Mercedes sculpture. It’s a whopping 26m tall, weighs 160 tonnes and the curve spans a full 45 metres. Designer Gerry Judah placed a replica 1934 Mercedes-Benz W 25 Silver Arrow alongside Lewis Hamilton’s Merc AMG Petronas F1 W04 from the 2013 season. A fitting tribute to 120 years of Daimler’s involvement in racing.
Onto Friday and the crowds are building. Ford’s stand focuses on the Mustang, which launches in autumn 2014 – bringing the Pony car to the UK for the first time. You’ll see plenty of ‘Stangs thrashing up the hill over the weekend.
Spot rare racers in all sorts of unusual spots at the Festival of Speed. Here’s a Red Bull at Right Angles.
Audi Tradition, the four-ringed heritage wing, brought the Type C Alpine Victor to the Goodwood Festival of Speed for the first time in 2014. These cars are now a century old – it won the Austrian Alpine Trial three times on the trot between 1912-14.
Audi also brought the 90 Quattro IMSA-GTO to the Festival of Speed, driven by Andre Lotterer, who set the fastest lap at the Le Mans 24hr earlier this month. It’s 25 years since Audi entered the category with the wide-bodied 720hp monster.
The Maserati Alfieri looks stunning at Goodwood. We’d forgotten how blue the wheels are – a new rim for a new type of Maser.
Proper old-school Ford muscle at the JD Classics berth: the Ford Capri Cologne Works is entered into the Classic Touring Icons class at the Festival of Speed, and is being driven by Chris Ward and Amanda Stretton.
From Pikes Peak to Goodwood. The Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak car will be driven by Sebastian Loeb, who is atttempting to break the hillclimb record this weekend. The record was set in 1999 by Nick Heidfeld in a McLaren MP4-13 – in an astonishing 41.6sec.
This video shows how Honda shipped in its historic race cars and bikes to the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The company spent 299 days preparing for the event and transported vehicles a combined total of 30,933 miles from the Honda Collection Hall in Japan, Spa-Francorchamps, Holland and across the UK. It’s quite a logistical operation, and the company now has 78 staff working at Goodwood over the four days of the show.
It’s always intriguing to see priceless historic racing machines rubbing shoulder with the cars of tomorrow. Nissan brought its Concept 2020 Vision Gran Turismo to the Festival of Speed – it’s another car created for the GT6 gaming franchise. Looks like a kind of brutalised GT-R of the future.
The Bonhams sale at the Festival of Speed on Friday raised £23 million – nearly half of which was made by the 1954 Ferrari 375-Plus which sold for £10.7m. A 1975 Lamborghini Countach LP400 Periscopio Coupe made a new world record, going under the hammer for £953,000.
Ex-gamer turned racer Jann Mardenborough set a new supercar record at Goodwood in a red-hot run on Saturday afternoon. He took the Nissan GTR-Nismo up the hill in 49.27 seconds – the fastest time ever in the supercar category. He beat touring car driver Anthony Reid in a Noble M600 and fellow Nissan driver cycling Olympic champ Sir Chris Hoy, the latter proving his inexperience with a big ‘off’ in his GT-R. The transition from two wheels to four ain’t so easy…
And here is the moment Hoy careered into the haybales by Molecomb corner in his GT-R. He was unhurt in the incident – and far from alone in crashing off the Goodwood hillclimb. An Alfa Romeo 4C driven by an Italian journalist went off and a Gumpert Apollo made hay of the wrong sort, too.
Ferrari reunited two of its F1 champs on Sunday at the Festival of Speed: John Surtees (left) and Kimi Raikkonen (right). It’s the 50th anniversary of Surtees’ four-wheeled F1 championship and Maranello wheeled out his 164 racer and the Iceman’s F2007. It’s a telling juxtaposition of yesteryear and contemporary F1 racers – but they’re still only as good as the human being behind the wheel…
Rally legend Sebastien Loeb in his Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak car set the fastest time up the Goodwood hillclimb on Sunday afternoon, when he took a second off his Saturday time. The nine-time WRC champ’s 44.60sec run was mesmerisingly rapid, but still couldn’t eclipse Nick Heidfeld’s 1999 record of 41.6sec in a McLaren F1 car. Perhaps nobody will ever better it.
Kimi Raikkonen meets fans at Goodwood on Sunday. And, yes, the sun was shining for once, bringing to an end the prospect of Glastonbury-style mudbaths…
Goodwood royalty: F1 title contender Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton (left), Stirling Moss (centre) and Lord March (right) look out on to the Goodwood action.
The one-off Ferrari F12 TRS, unveiled a week ago, makes its Goodwood debut in the best way Maranello knows how: storming up the Festival of Speed hillclimb at full chat.
And here’s the beautiful Maserati A6 CGS Berlinetta which scooped the Best In Show at the Cartier Style et Luxe concours on the lawns of Goodwood House. It was the 20th running of the show, which was judged by Apple design genius Johnny Ive, actor Rowan Atkinson and Mail on Sunday editor Geordie Greig. The A6 won the Maser-only Class 3: The Height of Fashion category to mark the brand’s centenary year, and went on to win the overall top gong too.
>> CAR magazine previews the 2014 Goodwood Festival of Speed