1. Ingram joins TT V8 wrestlers
Eighteen V8-engined cars take on a dozen Jaguar XK and Porsche ‘sixes’ as the Royal Automobile Club Tourist Trophy Celebration race provides Sunday afternoon’s sensational centrepiece. Tom Ingram, 2022 British Touring Car champion and hot on points leader Jake Hill’s heels in the current title fight, tests his reflexes in Mike Whitaker’s TVR Griffith 400.
A lone wolf among 10 venomous AC/Shelby Cobras, a brutal Sunbeam Tiger Le Mans coupe and lowline Tojeiro EE powered by similar Ford V8s, plus three Chevrolet Corvette Stingrays, a Bizzarrini 5300 GT and a Cheetah, the short-wheelbase TVR has been honed into a competitive beast by marque specialist Nigel Reuben and the Jordan Racing Team.
Hill is the latest ace to share Olly Bryant’s Cobra – winner in 2021 with Darren Turner co-driving – while BTCC champs Gordon Shedden (Cobra), Andrew Jordan (Corvette) and Matt Neal (Bizzarrini) stud the all-star field. Andy Priaulx sprang a surprise victory in William Paul’s Jaguar E-type last September and is back on the Coventry team, as is Tom Kristensen in Fred Wakeman’s Lister Coupe.
2. Surtees career celebrated
John Surtees was a five-time world motorcycle champion when, on 19 March 1960, he made his car racing debut at Goodwood. He’d previously tested an Aston Martin sports-racer, but to qualify Ken Tyrrell’s Formula Junior Cooper-BMC T52 on pole, ahead of Jim Clark’s works Lotus-Ford 18, and finish second to the Scot was a telling achievement.
More extraordinary was that ‘Big John’, at 26, was promoted to F1 less than two months later, debuting for Colin Chapman’s Team Lotus in the BRDC’s International Trophy event at Silverstone. Second in July’s British GP there, on pole for (and crashed while leading) August’s Portuguese GP, Surtees retired from the US GP, ending a part-season in which he added two more 350cc and 500cc crowns on two wheels!
Surtees, winner of Goodwood’s Glover Trophy in 1961 in a Yeoman Credit Cooper, subsequently raced Bowmaker Lolas before joining Ferrari in 1963 and winning the 1964 F1 championship with the Italian team. Celebrating the 60th anniversary of his F1 crown with a cavalcade of cars and bikes spanning his career will be special.
3. Friday night is sportscar night
The Sussex Trophy race, which for the first time graces the one-hour double-driver slot to open the show on Friday evening, evokes memories of the wonderful late-1950s multi-marque world sportscar championship TT era at Goodwood in which shapely and sonorous steeds proudly carried their national colours into battle.
As dusk descends, hopefully with a vivid autumnal sunset over Fordwater and rich engine notes enriching the evocative orchestral soundtrack, Jaguar and Chevrolet-powered Listers should be to the fore. Jaguar D-types lead the chase, with Le Mans winner Andy Wallace and Gary Pearson. Expect a Transatlantic challenge from Julian Majzub’s Canadian Sadler-Chevrolet and the American Kellison J4 (which Sam Wilson saddles), while Tom Kristensen and Sam Hancock race the Ferrari 246S Dino in memory of engineer Tim Samways.
Agile two-litre cars will make their presence felt over the distance, with the strongest set of Lotus 15s yet at a Revival. David Brabham, Richard Bradley and Olly Bryant are among the star names in Chapman’s chariots trying to match Antipodean combo James Davison/Roger Wills. Also Climax FPF-motivated, a pair of rear-engined Cooper T49 Monacos provide contrast too.
4. 10 ERAs grace Goodwood Trophy
Seventy-six years ago, when RAF Westhampnett opened its doors for the first time as the Goodwood Motor Circuit, nine English Racing Automobiles from the 1930s burst into life anew. Four are back, bringing siblings, for Saturday’s Goodwood Trophy race, including Prince Bira’s R5B ‘Remus’ – in which Ludovic Lindsay won at the first Revival Meeting in 1998 – now owned by rapid Irishman Paddins Dowling.
‘Remus’ was a recalcitrant teenager in 1948, head gasket failure in practice precluding a Daily Graphic Formula 1 feature start. Driver John Bolster, the celebrated future Autosport technical editor, found consolation by setting fastest lap in ERA R11B en route to third in another race behind Dennis Poore’s Alfa Romeo and Peter Walker’s R7B.
Julian Wilton races R7B, Heinz Bachmann Geoff Ansell’s R9B, Brad Baker Graham Whitehead’s R10B, and David Morris Bolster’s R11B from that momentous day. Expect previous Revival winners Mark Gillies (R3A) and Morris to make the running with Dowling. Nick Topliss (R4A) won’t be far behind, with Ben Fidler’s R4D experiencing the thrill of the chase once more alongside Tom Hardman in late-built AJM1, crafted by Tony Merrick.
5. Stirling Moss GT extravaganza
Stirling Moss was king of Goodwood from 1948-62, and delighted Revival-goers long after he wowed them with fingertip control of a Maserati 250F in 1999’s grizzly wet conditions, as precise as 45 years before in his early career. The maestro’s victories in four successive TT races, spanning Aston Martin DBR1s to Ferrari 250 GT Berlinettas in 1960 and 1961, are celebrated here.
Four years after Moss’s death, aged 90, Saturday’s Memorial Trophy race fittingly features a quartet of the timelessly graceful three-litre V12 Ferrari ‘SWB’s with Tom Kristensen and Emanuele Pirro their star drivers, although they will be outgrunted on the straights by larger displacement Jaguar E-types and AC Cobras. The Buncombe brothers – Alex and Chris – and Andy Priaulx are in svelte Jags, while Andrew Jordan and the omnipresent Nigel Greensall top the snake charmers.
A strong Aston Martin DB4 GT posse includes Dwight Merriman’s ex-Jim Clark example and boasts drivers of the calibre of BTCC star Josh Cook, Dario Franchitti, 2013 RAC TT Celebration winner Simon Hadfield and Kyle Tilley. The gallant Austin-Healey 3000 ‘DD300’, a triple Le Mans veteran, is also in the mix.
6. Barracudas chase Galaxie 500s
A quintet of Ford Galaxie 500s of the type in which Jack Sears terrorised the previously all-conquering Jaguar Mk2s in the 1963 British saloon car championship go head to head with a brace of Plymouth Barracudas as the St Mary’s Trophy contest reverts to its pre-1966 timeline.
The Blue Oval’s line-up could hardly be more stellar, with seven-time NASCAR Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, multiple Le Mans winners Romain Dumas and Andre Lotterer, triple World Touring Car conqueror Andy Priaulx and triple BTCC champ Gordon Shedden racing the seven-litre monsters in Saturday’s Pro leg. But Jake Hill relishes a challenge and picks up the Mopar brand’s cudgels, backed up by Abbie Eaton, rapid in her father’s younger Holden Commodore.
The under two-litre contest will be no less compelling, with Lotus Cortinas (Rob Huff, Tom Ingram, Matt Neal and Marcel Fassler), Alfa Romeo GTAs (Marino Franchitti, Andrew Jordan, Jochen Mass, Emanuele Pirro, Frank Stippler and Jean-Eric Vergne) and BMW 1800 TiSAs (Neel Jani and Christian Horner) trying to match the US muscle.
7. Lola versus Lotus in Madgwick Britpops
Small-capacity lightweight sportscar racing was a staple of Goodwood’s International events and Members’ Meetings of the later 1950s. Indeed they were the hot ticket as Colin Chapman’s Lotuses and Eric Broadley’s Lolas fought for supremacy, using Coventry-Climax engines, both British marques entering an era of rapid expansion to satiate a growing global customer base’s appetite.
Broadley rolled his Lola Mk1 prototype at Madgwick in August 1958, but the little car was quickly back on track and winning. Its beaten aluminium body remains unpainted and, in long-time custodian Keith Ahlers’ hands, is a likely Madgwick Cup frontrunner. As are Ben Adams’s black production version, winner of Goodwood’s final contemporary era race in July 1966 with Dickie Metcalfe up, and Nick Finburgh’s sister car.
Lotus Elevens head the opposition, with multi-Goodwood winner Miles Griffiths favourite in an LM150 model. Cooper T39 ‘Bobtails’, Sussex-built Elvas, a Kieft and a rare Rejo join the fray too.
8. The half-litre club reconvenes
From Castle Combe’s 500th car race meeting in April to the Oulton Park Gold Cup, via Austria’s Red Bull Ring, 500 Owners’ Association members are enjoying a tremendous season. But the jewel in their crown for 2024 is a return to the Goodwood Revival Meeting, the Earl of March Trophy gig which, like the Olympic Games, comes round every four years these days.
Per 1948 to 1956, when the motorcycle-engined cars were in their pomp, saddled by Stirling Moss (an opening day victor in September 1948) and future race school king Jim Russell, it’s Coopers against the rest in what became F3. Sunday morning’s Revival dream grid also encompasses Arnott, Comet, Erskine Staride, Flash Special, JBS, JP, Kieft, Mackson, Martin, Petty and Smith-Buckler chassis, plus French Cousy, Swedish Effyh, Dutch Larkens and Australian Trenberth rivals.
Tom Waterfield and Alex Wilson will take some beating, but George ‘Avro’ Shackleton flew in his ex-Byron Lewis Cooper at Oulton and is owed a result at Goodwood having previously been tripped into the pitwall. Simon Dedman’s ex-Ninian Sanderson ‘forward control’ Staride and the Martins of Simon Frost and Chris Wilson won’t be far behind.
9. Poignant parades; fashion sideshows
Apart from the homages to John Surtees, on Sunday there will be an appreciation of Goodwood’s RAF roots for the contribution of countless war heroes, military and civilian, within a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of D-Day in 1944.
Hordes of Jaguars mark the 75th anniversary of the XK engine that powered C- and D-types to five Le Mans 24 Hours victories in the 1950s. On Sunday, His Grace the Duke of Richmond & Gordon opens the Tyrrell Shed, the humble timber factory – now relocated from Surrey to the paddock – in which ‘Uncle Ken’ and his team built the cars and masterminded Jackie Stewart’s 1971 and 1973 F1 world championships.
Fashion and style will, as always, be at the forefront of off-track activities. The Revive & Thrive hub stages expert craft workshops and shows for all tastes. Over The Road amid the trade village the Sky Cinema will screen The Wizard of Oz, Grease and The Greatest Showman each day.
10. Adrian Newey's weekend to relax
Away from the rigours of his day job, creating the astonishing Red Bull hypercar and ongoing speculation on his next (ultimate?) career move, what does the world’s greatest Formula 1 designer do on his weekends off?
The answer is probably curating his stable of iconic cars – Gold Leaf Team Lotus-Cosworth 49B R8 his prize possession – and competing in landmark races, something else the 65-year-old excels at.
Fresh from finishing fourth in the Monaco GP Historique’s earliest three-litre F1 set in Graham Hill’s period mount, Newey could start looking forward to the Revival, a regular haunt for the past two decades. Back in 2009, with Indycar legend Bobby Rahal, he won the RAC TT Celebration in his Jaguar E-type, a feat repeated with Martin Brundle in 2012, setting a lap record en route. Newey also won 2013’s Ford GT40 race with Swede Kenny Brack.
This year Newey is contesting two races: Saturday’s Whitsun Trophy in his GT40 and Sunday’s RAC Tourist Trophy retrospective in the Jaguar, co-driven by son Harrison, 26. Both have been playing themselves in at recent Goodwood test days. Junior has unfinished business, for transmission failure halted the E-type while leading, courtesy of Jenson Button, in 2022.
