November 2020 • By Peter Stevens • Photos Peter Stevens and Goodwood
Presented by USAutomotive.co.uk

You can smell hot oil and burning rubber even if you are wearing a face mask, and that is what Charles March, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon required us all to wear at the Goodwood Speed Week. The UK Government’s requirements for outdoor sporting events applied to Goodwood the same as everywhere else; ‘social distancing’, ‘Track and Trace’, and in Goodwood’s case, no alcohol. But the sun shone, and the racing was great. More than 220 historic cars competed in 10 different races, once on Saturday and once again on Sunday. There were track demos from drift cars, supercars, Le Mans Porsches, First Look (with no live auto-shows in Europe in 2020, this was a chance to see recently launched cars), plus race and road cars built by the late Tom Walkinshaw’s TWR business, altogether too much to see in just one day!

“This was an event that rolled together the usual three annual events put on by Goodwood, The Members Meeting, The Festival of Speed, and the Revival. And as always there were things that had rarely been seen before.”

Lets start with the Mahrya Special, an American built tube-frame race car that later became a road registered street-rod/custom. Late in 1959 a group of less than reliable backers commissioned a mid-motor sports race-car from fabricator Bob McKee. The backers then ‘backed out’, so the build team took on the project themselves and finished the car in 1960. The aluminum body is said to have come from builder Dean Jeffries and none other than George Barris did the paint. The car was raced by Floyd Sable and, don’t you love the name, ‘Salt’ Walther. With a nicely prepared Chevrolet V8 sounding just as you would hope and looking great the car attracted a lot of attention. 10th place in its first race after a major re-build was impressive when racing against Ford GT40s, Lola and McLaren Chevys, and Lotus 30 Fords.

There was a one lap standing start Shootout where modern supercars, recent Le Mans 24 hour prototype cars and Le Mans series Audis and Porsches, mostly driven by professional race drivers, did their best to impress. But it turns out that there is nothing faster than a 30 year old Arrows Ford Formula One car driven by Weekend Warrior Nick Padmore. A lap speed of 122.44 mph (a new all-time record) around this very demanding road circuit got everyone’s attention.

However some of the closest and best racing was between the slower cars in both the Saint Mary’s Trophy for 1960 to 1966 racing saloon (sedan) cars. The battle between veteran Stig Blomqvist, Ford Galaxie 500 and current Le Mans racer Nicolas Minassian in a Studebaker Lark Daytona 500 was finally resolved after a brilliantly battle by just 3/10ths of a second in the old guys favor.

The SF Edge Trophy for race-cars built before 1924 was run as two separate heats of five laps each. Five laps might not sound a lot but there was more overtaking action in both races than in a season of GP or Indycar racing. Both races were won by young Hughie Walker in a monstrous aero-engined 1913 Theophile Schneider beating his father Mark twice. Mark Walker drives a1905 200hp Darracq with the sort of relaxed abandon that could characterize him as a hero, but the truth is all these guys are heroes. A 1916 Indianapolis Sunbeam was third, a 1917 Hudson Super Six fourth with ‘Top Hero’ Duncan Pittaway fifth in, or perhaps on, his 1911 Fiat S76 Land Speed Record car. The spectacular, flame spitting, 28.5L (1,730ci) machine was driven by American driver Arthur Duray to a 132mph record at Ostende in Belgium in 1913 after at least two famous race drivers refused to take it above 90mph saying it was ‘uncontrollable’. Duncan treats it with respect but still beats many much younger cars and always climbs from the ‘Beast of Turin’ covered in oil with a huge grin on his face. Even wider than that he wore when climbing out of his tiny Austin 7 Saloon!

BMW had brought from their Munich museum two cars that I was a bit involved with, the 1983 Brabham BMW BT52 that Brazilian Nelson Piquet used to win the Formula 1 World Championship in ’83 and the 1999 Le Mans winning BMW V12 LMR, neither was racing but both took part in what were called ‘high speed demonstrations’, they both still look great and sound great and were like meeting a couple of old friends who haven’t aged a bit in more than 20 years!

Not surprisingly there were Ferraris, Jaguars, Iso Grifos, Shelby Cobras, Porsches and Aston Martins, but the images I take away from this strange but glorious meeting are of father and son Walker uninhibitedly dueling, often in the midst of opposite lock slides, for each entire race, without risk to each other in a handling (Theophile Schneider) versus power (Darracq) masterclass.

For more information on Goodwood events visit: www.Goodwood.com

For information about Peter Stevens visit: www.peterstevensdesign.co.uk