Goodwood Festival of Speed: PH liveblog
Hillclimbing with Honda!
Plus, of course, you can keep up to date via our social media channels. We're on Twitter and Instagram, with Dan and Matt's personal Twitter feeds also available for the really, really keen. We'll be using the hashtag #PHFOS16 too. Should be a good one!
Apologies for the lack of updates yesterday, I'd forgotten just how long it takes to do a run up the Goodwood hill! I was fortunate enough to take both of Honda's NSXs as used in our Hero story recently, but it involved around four hours of queuing in total for about two minutes of driving. How delightfully British! Between those drives, an interview with NSX boss Ted Klaus and trying to get out of the car parks, there wasn't a great deal of time left.
Damn Rolls-Royce drivers
Today there's a drive scheduled in a rather exciting Porsche. Yes, that one with the stripes and the manual gearbox. More to follow soon. Hopefully.
Matt
Got to love a British summer, eh? If not quite a Glastonbury style mud-fest today was a little soggy at the Festival of Speed. Still, it was dry for our exciting taxi run onto the site in the Cup Porsches, enlivened by the odd gatecrasher coming the other way who thought they'd found an ace shortcut around the site. Just one that had have oncoming racing cars on it. And no passing places.
An aborted attempt was made to ascend the hill and watch some rally cars, rain forcing an about face and then some further shameless blagging to the Mercedes pavilion on the first corner and another dusting of rain for the cars about to go out. The first corner was more rallycross than hillclimb, the world's luckiest man in a Lotus 3-Eleven having one of those horrendous slow motion spins on the first corner and shaving the bales with the end fences of his rear wing. Somehow he managed to get away with it. Given the conditions Liam Doran should have been right at home but his epic tank slapper outside the house didn't look entirely planned. I'm sure he was actually going backwards at one point but somehow he got it back. Fair play to that man - the cheer from the crowd was well deserved.
Other highlights? We cheered Matt on in the NSX and the AMG GT-R's green paint looked better in the brief burst of sunshine it ran in. Looked and sounded serious too and credit to AMG boss Tobias Moers for conspicuously not acting like a grown-up and joining the rest of the supercar bad boys by doing a bit rolling burn out en route back to the paddock. Good man.
Dan
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Shuttle runs onto the site via a secret driveway in a Carrera Cup car, with a toddler sitting on your lap? Deliciously naughty at many levels but my fully race suited chauffeur managed to be both respectful and put on a show my three-year-old loved! Credit to Porsche, it is a better way of getting into the Festival of Speed than most have endured, given the slithery car parks. I also got a shuttle in a Cayman GT4 Cup car. Unlike the road version it has PDK, beefed up for racing and a lot punchier than the road car equivalent. I really want a go!
Now watching some very brave people drive Can-Am cars up the hill after a sudden downpour. Glad to be a spectator for that one!
Dan
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Two and a half hours. That's how long I had at the wheel of one of my all time dream cars. Only I didn't go anywhere. Yup, my run in the gorgeous 1970 Alfa Romeo 1750 GTAm turned out to be a static display only, after I suited up, got talked round the car and then went through the very noisy warm-up process with Giuseppe from Alfa Romeo studiously blipping the throttle bodies as I sat in the car and watched the gauges. He's clearly one of those mechanics who works by touch, smell and sound as much as spanners, his face fixed in concentration as he studiously watched every detail of the engine, oblivious to the 129db racket from the side exhaust. Yes, really. A punter walking past had noise meter and I motioned him over to see exactly how loud it was. Very.
So there we go. I NEARLY got to drive one of my dream cars. And, as you can hear, it sounds spectacular. I hope today's allotted drivers have better luck than I do!
Dan
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I'm not going anywhere so I may as well make some use of my lack of progress into the Festival of Speed site to share some excitement about a car I'll be driving up the hill later.
Driving? Yes, I have buckled from my default no drives policy after temptation came my way in the shape of one of my all time favourite Alfa Romeos. Why wouldn't I want to drive though? Well, the potential for a very embarrassing cock up is there and experience shows there can be a lot of faffing. But sometimes...
The car? It is a 1970 1750 GT Am, one of 40 built and a type that won the 1970 European Touring Car Championship. 220hp from a fuel injected 2.0-litre shouting through a side exhaust will hopefully make it sound faster than I intend to drive it!
Dan
It's always a treat to drive the Goodwood track, so twice in a week is a proper Brucie bonus. Today there aren't any speed limits and a selection of M cars to drive, so I couldn't wait to get... Oh. Mandatory JCW Mini laps. Plus there's only one M5. That sounds spoilt, but with the choice between Mini and M5 around Goodwood...
Gis a go!
There was plenty of time in an i8 and the Mini though, both a pleasant surprise. Interestingly, the Mini JCW was on Pirelli P Zeros rather than the much maligned Cinturatos, and it was certainly improved. Traction and turn in seemed better, even if it still lacked the precision of the best hot hatches. Bring on that Challenge...
The i8 was fast. Really fast. As on the road, it's hardly the most communicative driving machine, but you're certainly not going to be embarrassed on track. Now, how do I get a few laps in that Z8?
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Mercer Hotel, Portsmouth, Wednesday 0000h
Goodwood is go! In a dazzling display of legendary racers, fireworks and, er, Sandstorm by Darude, the BMW sculpture was revealed tonight. It's a fascinating structure, totally huge but quite minimalist in its design. It's the work of Gerry Judah, two years in the planning and six weeks in construction. Then the storm came...
Tomorrow we're back at the Motor Circuit in an array of M cars. Fingers crossed it's drier than Monday!
If you don't ask you don't get, right? That's the logic that led to a request being submitted for a Z8 from BMW and, well, here it is!
Isn't it stunning? It just doesn't have a bad angle; from the front, the back, the side or the interior, the Z8 just looks superb. I can't stop looking at it.
BMW's heritage car has 25,000 miles on it, which must make it one of the most well used Z8s around. Still, given this 18,000-mile car is for sale at £200K, 25 BMW remains a very, very valuable car. Yikes.
Driving has been limited so far, but there a few stand out points already: the engine is glorious, torquey from no revs but with a hard edge at higher up as well. Really fast too. The gearbox is from the bad old days of BMW and the driving position is awkward, but as something to mooch around in I can think of little better. And have I mentioned how good it looks?
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I have to confess, I'm rather excited about this year's Goodwood. Partly because I'm viewing it through a three-year-old's eyes, my eldest continuously asking about 'the car party' and ticking off the many and varied racing cars, racing motorbikes and 'bouncy trucks' he's looking forward to seeing.
Excitement has been raised another notch by the arrival of my transport - a rather smart looking Porsche Panamera GTS. £108K's worth of Porsche Panamera GTS. That's quite a lot of money for a family car. But for the hack from Yorkshire to Goodwood a rather civilised way to travel I think. GTS models are often held as the best of their respective ranges, often comprising a valedictory 'best of' compilation ahead of replacement by a new model. So it is with the Panamera. There aren't many performance saloons left with big, normally-aspirated V8s and, even within the turbocharged/diesel/hybrid Panamera range, the GTS stands out as a bit of a glorious anachronism. It may be lacking turbos but 440hp, a beautifully pure throttle response and an exhaust note that needs no help from the stereo system are poignant reminders of what we'll miss.
Any smugness about 'my' Porsche may be short-lived though. Matt's also taken delivery of his Goodwood transport. It has a large, normally-aspirated V8 too. He's going out for 'a bit of a drive' in it tonight - if he ever actually comes back he can explain more about it. And I'll steadily turn a vivid shade of rather envious green.
Dan
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"This is probably the worst I've seen the circuit in 18 years" is not the sentence you want to hear at a Goodwood track briefing. But that's what we heard this morning as the rain drove down on the motor circuit tarmac. It was torrential; never have I been more thankful of a 70mph speed limit!
RX-7 and MX-3 for now - more coming!
The RX-7 was also very cool, though perhaps not quite as exciting as I'd hoped. I need to find a spec, as I don't think this car is the full 280hp spec. Still, the boost and the noise and the looks were spot on. More soon!
Matt
The Japenese market cars all have a small square recess in the rear bumper for Japanese style plates , so they stand out easily when they are brought over here as a grey import. So the fact that this car has a UK or european sized recess for the rear plate suggests it is an original UK car and not one which was imported as a JDM.
Worth noting that no Z8s appeared in the Bond film because they'd not made any at that point - the cars in the movie are replicas (of a car not yet made - which is kinda odd)???
Cheers!
Dan
However if it is in good health it should have blown you away compared to the MX3.
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