The Goodwood Festival of Speed is an extraordinary event, with an equally extraordinary Kiwi connection. And this year’s event, held in July, was no exception.
The festival was founded in 1993 by Lord March, owner of the historic Goodwood Estate. Goodwood is home to the famous Goodwood Racing Circuit, opened just after World War 2 on an old airfield perimeter track, and host to hundreds of race meetings which included non-championship Formula 1, endurance races, and Tourist Trophy sports cars until it was closed as a race circuit in 1966 because the owners refused to put in chicanes, as demanded by motorsport controllers.
Brought up in this motor-racing steeped life, Lord March – Charles Henry Gordon-Lennox, the 11th Duke of Richmond – decided to give Goodwood a new lease of life as a motor sport venue in 1993, when he started the Goodwood Festival of Speed, a mixture of all sorts of motor racing and vehicle-related events, including a hillclimb which has itself become iconic.
In the early years of the festival tens of thousands attended over the weekend; now it attracts crowds of around 100,000 on each of the three days it is held. A record crowd of 158,000 attended in 2003, before an advance-ticket-only admission policy came into force and attendance was subsequently capped at 150,000.
The first Kiwi connection belongs to motorsport ace Rod Millen. A multiple winner of the world-famous Pikes Peak Hillclimb in the US, as well as New Zealand’s own Race to the Sky event held near Queenstown, Rod went to the invitation-only Goodwood Festival in 2002 with his Pikes Peak turbocharged Toyota Celica – and blasted his way into the record books as the fastest to ascend the short, sharp, UK hillclimb.
The next year he returned with an 800bhp (597kW) Toyota Tacoma, and was narrowly beaten into second place by Graeme Wight in his purpose-built open wheeler Gould GR51 hillclimb car.
Since then Rod has returned several times to Goodwood to demonstrate these awesome cars, and still manages to put in equally-awesome timed runs.
It was most certainly Goodwood that prompted Rod and his wife Shelley to start their own Leadfoot Festival at their property at Hahei, in the Coromandel Peninsula, in 2011, and this event has grown exponentially each year, held in the first weekend in February.
And now we move to 2019. This year there’s no Rod Millen appearance, but instead another trio of Kiwi drivers.
Tony Quinn is the owner of both the North Island’s Hampton Downs and the South Island’s Highlands Park racing circuits, and no mean racer in his own right.
This year he went along to Goodwood armed with The Monster Tamer, a heavily modified space frame Ford Focus with an 850bhp (631kW) 3.8-litre twin-turbo V6 engine and wild aerodynamic add-ons. This car was originally built for the Race to the Sky to challenge Japan’s “Monster” Tajima and his purpose-built Suzuki, but Tony has also raced it at Pikes Peak for the past three years.
The Focus Pikes Peak uses a mid-mounted VR38DETT engine from a Nissan GT-R. It has a nitrous system to overcome any lag in slow hairpin corners, and the power is sent to all four wheels.
Tony was up against some tough competition, and had a wild ride when he brushed the straw bales at one point, but still managed to finish in the top 10, in ninth spot. He also picked up an award for the Fastest Modified Special.
Romain Dumas was winner this year in the 670bhp (500kW) all-electric Volkswagen ID.R specially built to conquer Pikes Peak, while others ahead of Tony included multiple world rally champion Petter Solberg, in a rallycross-spec VW Polo WRX, his son Oliver in an equally wild Citroen DS3 WRX, and ex-F1 racer (and until this year) outright record holder Nick Heidfeld, in a Mahindra M6 Electro open wheeler built for the new Formula E racing series.
Nick’s outgoing record was achieved 20 years ago in a McLaren-Mercedes F1 car, but these have since been outlawed from the hillclimb except for demo runs, for safety reasons.
At Goodwood Tony also drove the Benetton B191 in which Michael Schumacher scored his first world championship points as part of a demonstration celebrating the German’s career.
Quinn owns the car, which is normally housed in his Highlands Motorsport Park collection.
The second Kiwi taking part at Goodwood was champion drifter “Mad Mike” Whiddett. Mike is no stranger to Goodwood, having visited there several times since 2014 to display his drifting skills, and this year he once more took something special to the party – his brand-new Lamborghini Huracan drift car.
In fact, it was Mike who told Lord March about Tony Quinn and his racing car collection, which resulted in Tony being tapped to compete at Goodwood.
“Mad Mike’s” exotic Lambo lends new credence to the sport of drifting, and Mike put on quite a display at Goodwood, despite hardly having turned a wheel in the brand-new car before the event. My take – watch this space!
But wait, that’s not all – a third Kiwi, Warwick Mortimer, a member at Hampton Downs and Highlands, also made the trip this year to show off his recently rebuilt Mazdaspeed March 84G sports car.
You can see the full hillclimb shootout video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SdSUDMueek