Next stop, Goodwood

A few days after the British Grand Prix, another icon of the British motorsport calendar revved into action at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. It’s an event that’s been on my wish list for quite a while and this year I was able to head down. And when I jauntily type head down, I mean take four hours to get there because of roadworks on the M25. Thankfully Goodwood is worth the wait. If Silverstone experience is like a feelgood motorsport festival, then Goodwood has all the grace of a garden party.

Goodwood always attracts the greats of motorsport to its summer celebration in the grounds of Goodwood House, but this year there was an extra sprinkling of stardust as it joined forces with Formula 1 to celebrate the sport’s 75th anniversary. More than 100 F1 cars were ready for action and seven F1 World Champions gathered to drive them up Goodwood’s famous hill. Even Adrian Newey left his drawing board to have a go in a 1960s red-and-gold Lotus.

As a Goodwood newbie seeing so many legends in one place is quite a surreal experience. Standing behind the bales of hay at the side of the famous 1.16-mile track, a legendary F1 car, driven by an F1 legend, will emerge around the corner and blast right out of the past. “Is that the FW14B and Nigel Mansell?!” I ask my friend, jaw hitting the hay bale. A few minutes later Mario Andretti appeared round the bend in his Championship-winning Lotus 79. And the cars and stars just kept on coming.

 
It was an incredibly hot day, the UK was in the middle of another heatwave, and when I walked past Ricardo Patrese now casually standing next to the Williams FW14B, with Mansell’s famous Red 5 on the nosecone, I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. It’s quite extraordinary the sheer number of famous faces and cars that you can bump into at Goodwood.

 
A little later, I chatted to another of my very favourite F1 drivers – four-time World Champion Alain Prost. For a brief spell in 2017, Alain and I both worked on Channel 4’s F1 coverage and occasionally I’d speak to him and write up news articles with his words of wisdom. Needless to say, he’s now forgotten my studious notetaking, and who can blame him? But it was good to see him again and on good form at Goodwood. He seemed delighted to be able to still fit into his original racesuit from the 1980s – and who can blame him for that also.

 
He also had an original member of his 80s crew with him, his former No.1 mechanic Indy Lall, who worked alongside Prost during his Championship-winning 1986 season. Indy is now in charge of keeping the historic McLaren cars running as the team’s Heritage Events Manager. Indy also features in Series 2 of our BBC podcast F1: Back at Base and is extremely dedicated to his job, where he and his team look after 200 heritage cars. From that collection, Prost was here to take 1988’s mighty McLaren MP4/4 up Goodwood’s famous Hill. “How many races did you win in that?” I asked him. “Seven” he answered. “But Senna got eight and won the title.” You can’t change history at Goodwood but at least you can keep it alive.