| Jacky Ickx, Coulthard, Arnoux,
Tambay, Moss, Alboreto - they were all at the 1999 Festival. Follow the  signs to see over 150 captioned photos of
cars and drivers from 1890 to 1999 - and its all free! |
| After the atrocious weather of the last two years everyone naturally hoped
for a change in fortune for 1999. We were not disappointed. Except for some brief showers
on Sunday morning it was blistering - literally. Forget baseball caps with a peak to keep
the sun out of your eyes, it has to be a straw hat with a brim in these days of ozone
layer depletion if you are to avoid burning your ears. And with the increasing threat of
skin cancer it makes scientific as well as sartorial sense. 1999 was the year that Jackie Ickx came at last to Goodwood. Sound file. 1999 was also the year Ron Dennis appears to have decided that McLaren were going to make a serious assault on the hill record with an MP4/13 geared for the job and an F1 comingman in the persona of Nick Heidfeld pushing adhesion to spectacular if not quite ultimate limits, for him anyway, to get the job done. Sound file. In California they say 'awesome' without a second thought. But when that McLaren went past on Sunday afternoon it was truly awesome. You just knew that in seven years of the Goodwood Festival of Speed nothing had ever gone that quick. The time confirmed it; 41.6 - ten unbelievable seconds faster than Marc Surer the next man - and he's no slouch by any stretch!
Lord March doesn't just bring great cars to Goodwood - he brings the greatest cars to Goodwood. Not just the cars that were there on the day, but the cars that made history. You have to study the programme to appreciate what the weekend is about. Months later in the depths of winter when you pull the programme out on a dark night and browse through it again you realise that something special happened that weekend in Summer. The great joy is that you know it is going to happen again next year because the standards at Goodwood are the highest. Goodwood never fails to excite and inspire. Where else can you depend on such quality and such fidelity to excellence in this day and age? Yes, there are other places and yes there are names you can depend on for quality or reliability or consistency: Beaune's Hotel de la Poste, Beaulieu's National Motor Museum, Porsche, Harvey & Hudson. If you believe in preserving your sanity by minimising day to day irritation you utilise them. Append Goodwood and memorise the three 'G's: This report is currently being updated. There is plenty to see but plenty more to do. In the next week we will be completing the text, inserting links and adding sound including speeches by Jacky Ickx and Murray Walker but for now just follow the 'next' signs at the bottom of every page for the Goodwood tour - from 1890 to 1999. By the way, watch out for those hyperlinks along the way, you can easily get lost on this diverse site and if you spend less than 30 minutes looking around - you have missed most of it! |
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