76th Goodwood Members’ Meeting
Sussex, UK 17-18 March
THE 2018 Goodwood Members’ Meeting may officially be the 76th, but in reality it was only the fifth running of the event since its revival. It’s probably safe to assume that when the Duke of Richmond decided to add a third major motoring event to his calendar, he had in mind a spring festival of racing – and in previous years its hallmark has been a host of golden daffodils – so the bitter winter weather that engulfed the 2018 event came as something of a shock. It could have been a disaster had snow settled on the track and forced the racing to be cancelled – it was salted as a precaution, which seemed to prompt some drivers to withdraw – but, apart from huddling from the Beast from the East, the shivering visitors were treated to just as great a spectacle as in previous years.
This was reflected in the calibre of the drivers, spearheaded by the likes of Mark Blundell who was a stunning exponent of the art of wrestling a Touring Car in the Gerry Marshall Trophy. Taking over from Kerry Michael and up against a raft of big-bangers, the ex-F1 ace showed masterful skill in his 2.0-litre Ford Escort RS to overhaul the Whittaker/Jordan Motorcraft Capri for victory by the slenderest of margins. To demonstrate the fearsome speed of the pacesetters, with former BTCC champ Tim Harvey in third in a Rover SD1, they actually lapped Jochen Mass in the Fabergé Capri.
One of the great attractions of the Members’ Meetings is that they are not restricted to pre-1966 cars like the Revival, and several grids and demos were a welcome diversion from the usual Goodwood fare.
A hugely diverse set of grids ran from pre1958 GP cars in the Hawthorn Trophy – won by Tony Wood in a Cooper-Bristol – to regular F5000 demos. That is not to say that the more traditional fields were in any way depleted, with one of the sights of the weekend being Emanuele Pirro’s magnificent car control in the one-off Ferrari 250GT SWB ‘Breadvan’ designed by Ferrari refugee Giotto Bizzarrini for Count Volpi. Sharing with Martin Halusa in the Moss Trophy, the Italian five-times Le Mans winner was extremely competitive but couldn’t do better than third, the race won by the Jaguar E-type of Phil Keen and Jon Minshaw.
Pirro also raced in F1, of course, and was in good company with Blundell, David Coulthard (who raced a Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing) and Lancashire hotshot Brian Redman, though the latter in effect spurned F1 in favour of other formulae such as CanAm and the sports prototypes that gave him a brace of Le Mans wins for Porsche.
Other winners were David Hart (Ford GT40, Gurney Cup), Pantelis Christoforou (Ford RS2000, Gerry Marshall Sprint), Clockwise from top Frank Lyons’ Eagle Chevrolet F5000 fights the snow; Coulthard piloted Gullwing; Graham Adelman’s 250F; Christoph Widmer’s Brabham; Gerry Marshall Trophy.
James Cottingham (Porsche 904, Ronnie Hoare Trophy), Jon Milicevic (BrabhamFord, Derek Bell Cup), Andrew and Mike Jordan (Lotus Cortina, Sears Trophy), Martin Stretton (Lister-Jaguar ‘Knobbly’, Salvadori Cup), Patrick Blakeney-Edwards (Alfa Romeo 8C-2300 Monza, Caracciola Sportwagenrennen) and Tim Llewellyn (Bentley 3/8 Special, Bolster Cup).
The tragic death of commentator and Goodwood favourite Henry Hope-Frost induced a sombre mood. Though every effort was made to honour his life, including #FEVER stickers everywhere, his passing was too recent for many who knew him.