Goodwood Festival Of Speed

A Cosworth-built 6.5-liter naturally-aspirated V-12, 11,000 RPM, hybrid powertrain, 1,160 horsepower (865 kilowatts). Those are just some of the astonishing numbers of the $3.0+ million Aston Martin Valkyrie. The car is able to hit 60 mph (97 km/h) in under 3.0 seconds and only 150 units will be produced with deliveries starting in September. Moreover, there is an even rarer Valkyrie AMR Pro, limited to just 40 units. Nevertheless, the Valkyrie’s debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed turned out to be less than glamorous, as the car had an unexpected malfunction during the hill climb.

Ford picked the Goodwood Festival of Speed as the venue for the public debut of a full-scale model of the extreme Team Fordzilla P1 racing vehicle. The concept was unveiled alongside other all-electric products from the automaker, including the Mustang Mach-E GT as well as the Mustang Mach E 1400.

If you’re a fan of the air-cooled Porsches, you ought to know about Singer. For the uninitiated, Singer is a U.S.-based company that restores only the Porsche 911 964s. Singer 911s are quite a hit with enthusiasts, and if you follow their work, you’ll know that their current big project is the Porsche 911 DLS. This basically includes restoration of 75 examples of the 911 as per the client’s requirements. Singer is bringing two of those to the 2021 Goodwood Festival of Speed and has let out some details regarding the same.

The latest Singer 911s are part of the company’s Dynamics and Lightweighting Study (DLS). The company has brought two of the 75 911 964 builds to Goodwood. This happens to be its sixth appearance at the festival.

I just finished watching the Duke of Richmond, the founder of the Goodwood Festival of Speed, take to the wheel of the brand new Lotus Emira, which just launched earlier this week, up the legendary hill climb. I am glad to report that the Festival of Speed is back for 2021 after a gap of nearly 18 months.

The Festival of Speed or FOS is a 4-day event that takes place around about the same time as the British Formula 1 Grand Prix every summer. It is a hill climb event and is touted by many as the celebration of motorsport. Every kind of car and motorcycle imaginable takes part in the event from all over the world. Be it vintage cars, old F1 cars, Rally Cars to the latest Electric Hypercars, Goodwood has you covered. 

The Goodwood Festival is also famed for bringing out rare and distinctive cars from private garages to race on the legendary course. There’s also a retro fairground, a revival auto show with scores of vintage cars, a revival cinema, and a Bonhams exclusive auction.

Here are some of the most anticipated cars to watch out for at this year’s event.

The Goodwood Festival of Speed has already kicked off and will run until Sunday evening with what seems like a year’s worth of topspeed goodness. You can expect to see everything from classic cars to modern electric cars tearing up the course, and you should definitely be sure to check out this year’s event. We’ve embedded the livestream below, along with the entire schedule for the rest of this week!

The third-generation Lotus Exige is six years old as of 2018 and a bit long in the tooth. A brand-new model is underway, but the Brits are keeping things interesting for the current model by building all sorts of special editions. At the 2018 Goodwood Festival of Speed, Lotus paid tribute to two of its most iconic race cars with the Exige Type 49 and Exige Type 79.

Both cars celebrate the company’s past glory in Formula One. The Exige Type 49 marks 50 years since Graham Hill won both the drivers’ and constructors’ championships in the Type 49, while the Exige Type 49 marks 40 years since Mario Andretti did the same with the Type 79. The former race from 1967 through 1970 and won two championships, while also scoring podiums in each season. The Type 79’s career was a bit shorter, from 1978 through 1979.

Both Exige models were crafted by Lotus Exclusive, the brand’s recently established bespoke division. Let’s find out more about them below.

Continue reading to learn more about the Lotus Exige Type 49 and Type 49.

Ford has entered the electric SUV realm with the Mustang Mach-E, a sporty hauler capable of up to 459 horsepower and up to 300 miles of range. But FoMoCo didn’t stop here and also created a monstrous race-spec Mach-E. Fitted with no fewer than seven electric motors that deliver a combined 1,400 horsepower, the Mustang Mach-E 1400 is downright spectacular when it comes to performance, but it also looks cool in its race-inspired suit. The SUV was recently showcased at Goodwood Speed Week, where master drifter Vaughn Gittin Jr. proved that you don’t need gasoline power to do donuts.

You don’t often see a 3,600-pound 1963 Ford Galaxie 500 participating in any kind of sanctioned race. Even rare is the sight of a Galaxie 500 destroying the competition in a sanctioned race at the 2020 Goodwood SpeedWeek. Driven by 2016 BTCC Championship runner-up Sam Tordoff, the mountain of a Ford tore through a field of classic race cars that included Lotus Cortinas and Mini Coopers as if those cars were battery-operated. It was an incredible display of nostalgic might for a car that, back in its time, was considered too fast for track racing and too heavy for drag racing. More than 50 years after it was launched, the Galaxie 500 finally had its day at the 2020 Goodwood SpeedWeek, and it was glorious to see.

It’s been a few weeks since the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed, and we’re still getting a steady diet of videos from the event. Not that anyone’s complaining, least of all me. I’ve come to enjoy these video parachutes, and one that we haven’t seen yet is this video of a Dodge Viper drift car that partook in the hill climb. Driven by drifter extraordinaire Dean Kearney, the Viper drift car snakes its way up the hill climb in ways only the Viper can. Extra points also go to Kearney, who managed to complete the hill climb even in the middle of a rain-soaked course. Then again, Kearney’s not your average drifter — he’s a veteran of Formula DRIFT — and this particular Viper is not your typical drift car, either. Check out the video and watch the Viper going sideways in the rain. It’s worth the next two minutes of your mornings.

Porsche unveiled at the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed the most expensive, most advanced, and fastest 911-based race car in its portfolio, the emblematic 911 GT3 RSR. This latest version takes everything good about the 2017 model and distills it all in a better overall package that’s been improved in all four corners, even if you can’t tell the differences from the outside. The engine is still naturally aspirated, but it’s bigger than ever, and it’s still placed in front of the rear axle. Power is said to surpass 500 horsepower depending on the restrictor, and it gets sent to the back wheels only, just as before. Now, however, the car is easier to service and is safer.

Porsche has been putting out 911-based race cars since the ’60s and, in the five decades that have passed, the German automaker has constantly been improving the recipe while also staying true to the original ingredients. The shape is still largely familiar, albeit wider than ever, and the engine is still a six-cylinder boxer, and it’s naturally aspirated. However, the differences are aplenty: the engine is now in front of the rear axle instead of behind it, the exhaust now exits in front of the rear wheels through the sills, it’s water-cooled, and the capacity went up from 4.0-liters to 4.2-liters to make it more elastic. Is this the best 911 GT3 RSR ever? It has to be if it wants to surpass the impressive 2017 model that’s won almost anything there is to win in the FIA WEC and the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship. And, frankly, with a $1 million + price tag, it better be!

It is now the second consecutive year that I have attended the Goodwood Festival of Speed and it seems that each time I go, I even more fervently want to return next year to see its gloriously eclectic mix of motors. There is literally nothing else like it in the world - it’s a unique venue that brings together cars and bikes from all eras, some famous faces, and it is peppered with cool events crowned by the famous Hillclimb

There is so much to like about it. Even just the atmosphere you experience by merely perusing its grounds, centered around the historic Goodwood House - there is nothing else like it. Then there are the vehicles present at the event, which range from century-old classics that you rarely get to see running, to the very latest cars that have yet to make their showroom debut. Oh, and everything in between too.

One of the cars I was most eagerly looking forward to seeing at the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed is the upcoming 2020 MINI Cooper S JCW GP. The automaker chose to have the car’s “dynamic debut” up the Goodwood Hillclimb but, when the car was not on the track, it was quietly sitting in the paddock looking like a touring car on road tires - I examined it closely and took a few closeup shots of the camouflaged pre-production prototype.

BMW’s new, third-generation 1 Series, internally known as the F40, marks a big departure for the model because it moves from a rear-wheel-drive architecture to one that’s front-wheel drive. This not only has a big impact on how it drives, but it also means it has a new and different aesthetic vibe.

Whereas the previous-gen F20 1 Series, regardless of body style, betrayed the fact that its engine was mounted longitudinally and that power was sent to the rear wheels, the new F40 clearly has the proportions of a front-wheel-drive car. But it’s not a bad looking car by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I got to see the top tier M135i at the 2019 Goodwood Festival of Speed and even as I approached the BMW stand I was preparing myself for the worst, but when I actually saw the car, all my fears were dispelled.

The Goodwood Festival of Speed is a great place to go if you want to see some of the world’s most revered racing cars of the past as well as a vast array of modern machinery and peeks into the future. The festival that takes places annually since 1993 on the grounds of the Goodwood House is also the place favored by some manufacturers to unveil their new products. The 2019 edition was chosen by Audi as the perfect occasion to pull the wraps off Audi Sport’s latest creation: the 640 horsepower Audi R8 LMS GT2, the most powerful racing car Audi has ever sold through its Customer Racing department. It’s designed for a new formula of Grand Touring racing that slots between GT3 and GT4 and caters for amateur racers looking for hight output machinery that’s quick down a straight line and easy to manage through the twisty bits.

Audi is a pragmatic company. Audi doesn’t put out a product for a class it doesn’t think will succeed. When Audi finally built a GT3-spec car, the class had been around for three full seasons, and it showed no signs of slowing down with more cars joining in (that same year Alpina debuted a B6-based contender, for instance) at a steady pace. Then there was the R8 LMS GT4, the GT3’s baby brother, its more pedestrian relative that is still tremendously fast (it puts out somewhere between 580 horsepower and 600 horsepower sans limiter, as much as the GT3 car without restrictions) and also expensive.

The RS3 LMS followed suit, the first sedan built by Audi Sport, one that, again, was built to be raced in a burgeoning category: TCR Touring Cars. The RS3 arrived in 2017, three years after the TCR format was first introduced. This is what makes the R8 LMS GT2 the odd one out. It’s the first Audi Sport-built car to be launched before any cars built to this ruleset ever took the track. So Audi must already know that it will be a success.