Goodwood Festival of Speed

The Goodwood Festival of Speed 2013 was held July 11-14 at Goodwood House and the 1.16-mile Goodwood hill climb in West Sussex, England. A record total of more than 195,000 attendees visited this year's event, with more than 150 star drivers and riders present, plus over 500 interesting and diverse vehicles, as Goodwood celebrated the 20th anniversary of the popular motorsports gathering.

The 20th annual Festival saw the biggest, best, fastest, loudest and most outrageous vehicles of all time invited back to Goodwood to help celebrate the birthday. Goodwood also honoured the 90th anniversary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, 60 years of the World SportsCar Championship, the 50th anniversaries of the Porsche 911, McLaren, Lamborghini, Mini Cooper S, Ford Lotus Cortina and the European Touring Car Championship and the 40th birthday of the World Rally Championship.

Goodwood celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Porsche 911 with a bespoke 911-inspired sculpture, displayed, as has become the tradition, quite prominently outside Goodwood House. Twice each day the hill climb played host to a dedicated class of road and race going 911s, covering all seven generations of this iconic rear-engined sports car from Germany. The Sunday Shootout competition was won by Justin Law in his Jaguar XJR8/9, with Law posting a quick time of 45.95 seconds up the 1.16-mile Hill Climb course. In second place (47.32 secs) was the impressive Peugeot 208 T16 Pikes Peak car driven by Gregory Guilvert.

The Cartier "Style et Luxe" Concours, in line with the Festival's "Best of the First 20 Years" theme, featured eight vehicle classes and the cars on display at Goodwood reflected many of the greatest machines that have graced the Cartier Lawn over the last two decades. Unlike a traditional Concours d'Elegance, the judges at Goodwood are not all car experts but also personalities from the arts, with this year's presenters including motor racing engineer Gordon Murray, Apple design guru Jonathan Ive, singer Simon Le Bon and his model wife Yasmin, TV presenter Kevin McCloud and designers Marc Newson and Terence Conran, among others. Judging itself is not a scientific points-scoring process, but a consideration of each car as an object of beauty and practicality.

As always, DK Engineering had a significant presence at the Festival of Speed. David Cottingham drove the 1960 Goodwood TT winning 250 SWB, (#2119GT) which at the time was entered by Rob Walker and driven by Stirling Moss. DK have maintained the car for thirty years and we produced a short film on the car just before Christmas. This can be seen below. DK also entered the 250 LM in the "Style et Luxe" Concours as well as an exceptional 5,000 km F40. The event is always, very popular, and as always it is great to see so many cars recently sold or maintained by DK, including the most famous AC Cobra 289 "39 PH" which looked fantastic, following an engine rebuild at DK, up the hill on all three days.