Well the weather couldn’t have been any better, blistering hot sunshine made for a sweaty, if not a little dusty 2013 Festival of Speed. We were there to catch all the action on Thursday and Friday; luckily escaping most of the heatwave!
We had a 4 hour long trip to cover the 120 miles..it should have taken 2 hours, but thanks to the M25 car park, we eventually got in and parked at 13:30 on the Thursday. The parking situation was a chaotic joke, we sat and watched two marshals nearly have a fight, and somehow we ended up in car park E; a huge, dusty, hell hole of a place. After a long hot, dusty walk we finally arrived at the Moving Motorshow, an area where you can take cars from each manufacturer out on the Goodwood Hill Climb course. Due to our late arrival we didn’t have a hope in hell of driving a Dacia, let alone a Nissan 370Z!
So the rest of the day was spent perusing the manufacturers great big stands, and having a nose around the paddocks. 99% of the cars were already there which was good as we didn’t get to make it back over that side of the track the next day.
Friday we were up early, with only 20 miles from Goodwood we left with 2 hours before the action started. Lucky that…we sat in traffic around Chichester for over an hour, the roads in that part of the world are a nightmare at the best of times. Goodwood makes it unbearable.
Ignoring the “All gates” signs we made our way to car park M (avoiding car park E at all costs!) We parked up without queueing and had a leisurely 10 minute walk until we were track side at Molecombe corner, perfect!
Thankfully the weather was overcast for most of the day, allowing us to watch every car attempt the hill climb. In fact we stood there a whole 5 hours before moving. Time flew, the action was fast paced, and as ever the variety of vehicles was excellent. From classic motorbikes and land speed record cars, to Loebs fresh off the Peak Peugeot 208 T16.
After lunch we moved up to the rally stage, to take shelter in its vast shady woodland. There is always something about seeing one of Colin McRae’s cars fly past you at break neck speed, it gives me shivers! Classic rally winning Mini Coopers were running side by side with Hirvonens current Citroen DS3, it was a great mix.
We decided to leave after that, partly to try and escape further congestion getting the 20 miles back to base, and partly due to being knackered!
All in all apart from the traffic that we seemed to find along any journey we took, Goodwood 2013 was brilliant, a petrol heads paradise….you bet we will be going back in 2014!
We showed you in our preview article what cars to look out for, having seen the majority of them in the flesh here they are!
Oh, and lets not forget how good our Peugeot 508 RXH looked!
