There’s something supremely dull about cars, vintage or otherwise, parked on a concours lawn. Unused. Pristine. A little too loved. They should be driven, not kept so clean that you can eat off of them. There used to be three places in the world where you could truly see vintage cars run en masse at a festival celebration: Goodwood Festival of Speed, Goodwood Revival, and the Monterey Rolex Motorsport Reunion.
Now there’s a fourth event worthy of attention: Velocity Invitational.
Velocity Invitational is still young, starting in 2019 and taking a brief hiatus due to the pandemic. But it’s quickly becoming a marquee event for vintage racing. It’s enough of an occasion for Goodwood to license the Velocity livestream to showcase the unique mix of historic race cars. Founder Jeff O’Neill started it for one simple reason: He hated the stuffy, annoying race weekend format of years past.
High above the track in a private suite, O’Neill chronicled why he started Velocity. He is the son of a winemaker who always had an eye for racing, and wanted to drive the heroic cars of his era, but never raced professionally.
In his own words, O’Neill "lost about ten times more money than [he] expected," but decided to carry on with the festival regardless. His goal is to take a normally exclusive race weekend and make it a gathering worth spectating, even going as far as allowing kids 15 and under to attend for free.
This goes further than just providing a roster of vintage race cars, cars that he insists "must be real," not replicas, and must have provenance. If it’s a Ferrari 250 TR, then it must be a chassis that won. It’s a high bar, but it means that the roster of cars is beyond belief. Everything from a Maserati Birdcage to a Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR is represented, and every shade in between. For 2024, Velocity even added a time attack class in collaboration with Global Time Attack to open the event to contemporary tuner cars, as well as drift cars and one-off builds like the Subaru Project Midnight and Family Huckster.
More important than anything is the venue, which has switched between the famous Laguna Seca raceway and Sonoma raceway in the three years the event has been run. I attended the Laguna edition, and it was spectacular, but O’Neill prefers his home track of Sonoma as a permanent home for Velocity. When asked why, he simply waved out of the window of the suite toward the panoramic view of Sonoma County’s rolling hills and flat wetlands. Then he pointed at a vineyard a few miles away. "That’s one of mine," he said.
Access to the roster of heady machinery is excellent. The paddock is open to anyone with a ticket. It’s that much more satisfying when you see a car getting prepared for racing rather than one that’s rolling back into some billionaire’s garage again, just minutes after the event. It’s even sweeter when any of the cars on track could win a concours, but are driven to their limits instead. Sonoma also has excellent spectator access, with most of the track visible from three main viewpoints, a standout feature of the track.
There’s something to the sound of classic race cars that the modern stuff just can’t touch either. Sure, there’s a lot to be said for the soundscape of a modern IMSA race, teeming with the crackles of upshifts and the buzzsaw song of traction control. But nothing can replace the sound of an old 911 GT3R scrabbling for traction onto a straightway while defending against the thumping V-10 of a Dodge Viper GTS-R. All the while, the CLK GTR’s V-12 screams in the distance, with Velocity being the only time in 2024 that a CLK GTR ran on track in a race.
The boundary break between eras and genres of racing is mind-bending, and suddenly bench races that you could never dream of happen. As it turns out, the Oreca Viper GTS-R out drags the Flying Lizard 911 RSR up a straightaway. And it’s possible to see Ryan Tuerck drift a 3S-GTE swapped vintage Toyota Stout pickup truck right after getting an earful of Peugeot 908 Le Mans-winning diesel power. Then you can see Travis Pastrana do a live Gymkhana with the family huckster. DirtFish will give you a truly terrifying rally ride-along on a nearby makeshift rally stage. And as you walk back from your ridealong, you’ll rub shoulders with Pato O’Ward on his way to the bathroom.
It’s a truly incredible occasion for any motorsport enthusiast. It may be new, but Velocity is the real deal, and it’s cheaper to attend than Monterey Historics at $89 for a Sunday ticket. Mark my words: It won’t be long until this becomes the true Goodwood of North America.
