Goodwood Festival of Speed highlights

WELL, that’s the Goodwood Festival of Speed wrapped up for another year.

The event was once again filled with classic machines, living legends, mega-dollar supercars and plenty of tyre smoke!

Held across three days, it would have been easy to miss some of the action, so we’ve decided to bring you the highlights.

First off, is the hill climb winner. Amongst all the tyre-torturing demos and supercar parades, it is easy to forget that the Festival of Speed is actually a racing event.

At the end of the weekend, a selection of the fastest cars in the paddock tackles the driveway-cum-hillclimb in pursuit of glory.

This year it was Olly Clark who doubled down on his victory from last year, stomping the field in his mental Subaru ‘Gobstopper II’. The unhinged time-attack car dominated the weekend, completing the hillclimb in just 46.29-seconds, crossing the line at 225km/h.

Next best was Indy 500 winner Kenny Brack in a McLaren P1 GTR with a time of 47.07-seconds; crossing the line at 217km/h.

Other highlights include Nico Rosberg taking the 2014 Mercedes-Benz W05 Formula 1 car for a run up the hill.

This is the same car he and Lewis Hamilton used to dominate the 2014 F1 season.

There was also a number of older generation F1 cars driven by stars of the sport – including Martin Brundle in Jenson Button’s 2009 title winning Brawn GP BGP001.

The centrepiece of this year’s Festival of Speed was again the traditional sculpture. This year’s rendition focused on BMW’s centenary celebrations, and was officially unveiled in a spectacular fireworks display.

Fresh from 24 Hours of Le Mans was the overall winning #2 Porsche 919 LMP1 and GTE Pro class victor’s Ford GT.

Despite the damp conditions, this year’s FoS was light for off-track excursions, with most spins being intentional showboating manoeuvres. The closest anyone really came to an off was former Stig, Ben Collins, looping a Ford Raptor; and a Supra-powered Lancia time-attack car clipping one of the hay bales which lines the track.

Now we wait patiently for next year’s event to roll around.