Burnouts to burn-downs – Goodwood 2018 was vehicular carnage

THE Goodwood Festival of Speed has been run and done for another year, with the grounds of Lord March’s country estate being packed solid with a cornucopia of droolworthy metal.

As we have become accustomed to over the event’s 25-year history, the 2018 Festival of Speed featured some of the best racing and road-faring metal in the world being pushed to the limit by motorsport legends up Goodwood’s famous driveway – and some cars being pushed well beyond.

If you couldn’t plonk yourself on the couch and watch the livestream this weekend - or didn’t have enough spare change for a flight to the UK to see it all in person - here’s everything you missed.

Two racing Porsches shunted into each other

See the monumental muck-up as the two racers collide in a bizarre fashion.

If you ever feel bad about a mistake you’ve made while at work, just remember that someone crashed a Porsche 991.2 GT3 Cup Car into the back of a 969/C Group C race car… after the finish line.

This incredibly awkward moment arose on Sunday at Goodwood during a parade of Porsche race cars to celebrate the brand’s 70th anniversary.

The GT3 Cup Car approached the finish line with some serious pace, and the 969/C already significantly slowed. As the gap rapidly closed, the GT3 driver realised too late, hit the brakes, and slammed the rear of the Group C car. Whoops

A Lexus RC F GT3 burnt to the ground

Let’s all take a moment to shed a tear for a lost racecar. We’re not sure why, but this Lexus RC F GT3 decided to immolate itself in the Goodwood paddock. Tragic, but thankfully driver Scott Pruitt was able to exit the vehicle safely and was uninjured. Shame about that vertical-format video though.

Liam Doran’s Pikes Peak car ripped itself apart

On the list of ‘Things you don’t want to happen while driving your Pikes Peak Ford RS200’, having your rear bodywork disintegrate at speed is pretty high up.

But that’s exactly what happened to Liam Doran as he made his way up the Goodwood hillclimb. Thankfully, despite the spectacular destruction of bodywork, Doran was able to avoid a significant shunt, brushing the hay bales before coming to a rest.

Does the name ring a bell? Doran is the same driver who had his FIA racing licence revoked after he punched cars, got involved in a brawl, and then tried to hide from police underneath a parked vehicle at the Gatebil festival in Norway in 2016.

Roborace completed a run without a driver, and didn’t crash into a wall

While Siemens’ autonomous Mustang demo didn’t go, er, terribly smoothly on day one of the event, Roborace proved that not all self-driving vehicles are created equal.

The self-driving race car made the first fully-autonomous hillclimb in the event’s history, relying completely on artificial intelligence, not GPS data, to do so, and looking much more confident than the wobbly Pony Car. Welcome to the future.

The Volkswagen I.D. R blitzed the field

Fresh from decimating the outright Pikes Peak record, Romain Dumas and the Volkswagen I.D. R attempted a much shorter hillclimb at Goodwood.

And with a time of 43.86 seconds, Dumas and the I.D. R easily reset the electric record for the driveway, while also besting every other competitor in this year’s shootout.

The I.D. R is now the third-quickest car at Goodwood, behind the Gould-Cosworth GR51 that was steered by Graeme Wight, and Nick Heidfeld in a McLaren-Mercedes MP4/13 which recorded a scorching 41.6-second time in 1999.

Porsche’s 919 Evo was present during the event, but the brand refrained from a record attempt. However, driver Neel Jani nevertheless completed a 49.86 second run on a ‘parade’ lap, good enough to be comfortably inside the top 10 during this year’s shootout.

NIO EP9 crushed combustion race cars in the hillclimb

Speaking of electric cars crushing the opposition, the NIO EP9 was the second-quickest car for the weekend, beating a bevy of combustion-powered race cars.

Peter Dumbreck was at the wheel of the 1000kW fully-electric hypercar, which was shod with slick tyres for the run (outlawing it from competing in the Supercar shootout for road-legal cars), recording a time of 44.32 seconds.

That’s quicker than the 46.43 seconds time put down by twice European hillclimb champion Joerg Weidinger in his 3.5-litre Judd V8-powered BMW E36 M3 hillclimb car.

Drifting, 1959 style

While professional drifters are now a mainstay of the features bill at Goodwood, Grant Williams took the crown as this year’s sideways king thanks to his thoroughly loose antics in a 1959 BTCC Jaguar Mk1.

Williams hustled the 59-year-old Jaguar up the hill, and was sideway at almost every corner. Old dog, new tricks.

The Goodwood hay bales strike again

It wouldn’t be a Goodwood Festival of Speed without drivers punching million-dollar race cars into the hay bales which line the circuit.

Both Rod Jolley in a 1958 Lister-Jaguar ‘Monzanapolis’, and former professional wrestler Bill Goldberg in a Toyota Tundra NASCAR truck, found themselves falling foul of the hay bales.

Thankfully the hay is slightly more forgiving than concrete.

All. Of. The. Burnouts.

• Watch this video of a Ferrari 488 GTE ripping a huge skid away from the start line
• Or see the new Aston Martin DBS Superleggera doing the exact same thing
• McLaren Senna rips up the tarmac on the Goodwood hillclimb
• McLaren also had their new 600LT ripping donuts in front of Goodwood House
• Kenny Brack tears it up in a $40 million plus Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe

When there’s smoke, there’s fire… or burnouts. Goodwood might be pretty far removed from the automotive anarchy of Summernats, but more than a few sets of tyres get vaporised over the course of the weekend.

And unlike Summernats, it’s a pretty diverse field that lays down rubber at Goodwood. Le Mans GT racers, F1 cars, multi-million dollar classics, and brand-new supercars all got into the tyre-frying action – including one particularly spirited burnout performed by Bruno Senna in a McLaren Senna.