The magnificent South Downs topography provides the arena as well as the gentle but inexorable 300ft gradient for the 1.16-mile speed and demonstration runs up the parkland road.
Goodwood Festival of Speed
Goodwood, UK
11 – 14 July 2024
The Festival of Speed is a long weekend’s jamboree, a massive social gathering, and a chance to gorge ourselves on the most spectacular and iconic competition cars and bikes there have ever been, plus there’s every chance of rubbing shoulders with half-a-dozen World Champions in the process. The Festival of Speed gathers in hilly parkland in the Duke of Richmond’s estate, centred on Goodwood House and a mile or so from the race circuit. Every year there’s a fabulous, gigantic vehicular sculpture in front of the House, its constituents reflecting whatever the featured marque.
The magnificent South Downs topography provides the arena as well as the gentle but inexorable 300ft gradient for the 1.16-mile speed and demonstration runs up the parkland road. That’s lined with the most substantial straw bales to protect spectators in the event of an off, which points up the worth of a grandstand seat for at least part of the time – so you can easily see over the straw bales. Each day 300 cars and bikes rush up the hill, split into classes ranging from pre-1914 ‘pioneer’, vintage, front- and rear-engined single-seaters, pre- and post-war Grand Tourers, sports prototypes and saloons, plus classic and modern rally cars; bikes are more straightforwardly corralled as ‘spectacular’.
