What is the Goodwood Festival of Speed?

The Goodwood Festival of speed is that largest motor car festival in the world attracting top car manufactures as well as  displaying many rare, iconic, famous and modern motor racing cars and bikes.  Many famous race drivers and riders from the past and present also attend the event so is a good place to go to see many of the motor racing heroes past and present. It is also the only show that all the top Formula One teams attend.

The festival is always arranged to be the weekend before or after the British Grand Prix and is located at Goodwood house near Chichester in the South of England.

McLaren MP46 F1 1991 Senna 3rd Championship

What is The Moving Motors Show?

The Moving Motors show is a motor show where manufactures show off their latest cars and allow people who have applied in advance to take the cars up the hill climb to try them out. All the exhibited race cars and bikes that will be shown off on the weekend of the Festival of Speed (FOS) are displayed in the exhibits, you just don’t see them in action or the vast array of famous motor racing stars from past and present.
If you want to take photos of the vehicles on display then it’s a good day to go as the crowds are much smaller than they will be on the other days.

A day at the Goodwood Moving Motors Show

I have been meaning to go to the main Goodwood festival of Speed event held on a Saturday and Sunday for several years but never managed too actually go for various reasons. So I promised myself I would go this year. Once again something came up and we were unable to make the dates. Through chance the AA was giving away tickets to the Moving Motors event held on the Thursday and as we had just changed our car insurance to the AA so we were eligible to apply. To my surprise we managed to get a couple of tickets.

Knowing the crowds would be smaller and I would have a good opportunity to see the cars on display even if they were not on track I was not disappointed I wasn’t going to the main event.

Getting to the Goodwood Festival of Speed Moving Motors Show:

Chichester can get busy near Goodwood at the best of times so we was expecting to sit in queue’s for a while. We arrived in the area of Goodwood around 9:30am from the East on the A27. To our surprise there was no queue’s, we just followed the signs to Goodwood FOS straight into the rather large field of car park A on the south side of the Golf course. There was a few thousand cars their by that point as the gates open about 7:30 am and the car park was about half full.
There was a tractors and trailers ferrying people from their cars to the golf course but we decided to walk. It took us around 5 to 10 minutes to get to where the tractors were dropping people off. We then had to walk across a temporary walkway across the Golf Course to the festival entrance over various surfaces or grass, plastic walkway and gravel walkways. It took about 20 minutes to walk from our car to the entrance.

I had two tickets for myself and my wife but my daughter was free that day and wanted to come along. I had checked the website and saw that it had not sold out and decided that we would buy her a ticket on the gate. I didn’t realise that the event was advanced ticket only and it wasn’t possible to buy a ticket on the gate. There was a couple of people trying to sell spare tickets but unfortunately I only had a credit card. Thankfully a group of men overheard us explaining our predicament to the Ticket collection office and took pity as they gave us a spare ticket they had.

So I would like to say thank you once again to the generosity of the men who donated their spare ticket.

What is there to see at the Moving Motor Show.

The first area we came to was exhibiting aircraft and flying related exhibits such as paragliders and several small aircraft such as Biplanes. Behind this was where all the new cars that were being picked up and dropped off by the lucky people who were taking them up the hill climb. There was also several cars by each manufacture on display to look round.

Delahaye type 165 Cabriolet 1939

Bugatti type 44-45 Roadster Luxe 1929

We made our way round an area where vintage cars and classic super cars were on display. Then we had a look round the McLaren stand where the 650s and P1 supercars were on display along with a few stern looking bouncers. There was also some F1 memorabilia such as a helmet and steering wheel of Alain Prost and Mika Hakkinen.

McLaren 650s

We then made our way over to the display paddock where all the classic and modern race cars and bikes were on display.

This was our main area of interest looking at a whole range of old and new racing machines. Most of the displays had arrived but there was a few cars and bikes that arrived throughout the day. Ferrari, Williams and McLaren has their F1 cars on display. Red Bull and Mercedes arrived later in the day.

Renault F1 Fernando Alonso 2005 Championship car

1971 Ferrari 712 Can Am driven by Mario Andretti at Watkins Glen

Williams F1 1990 Thierry Boutsen

Land Rover obstacle course

On the opposite side of the track of all the car manufacture stands and general tents and displays for various companies and organisations showing off their products. Most notable was range rover with an obstacle course that you could be taken round of you joined a very long queue. Jaguar had a built a skid pan that a driver takes you out on their latest car and spends a couple of minutes doing powerslides and donuts. Honda had an interesting stand of Their full size cars packages in matchbox style boxes including a McLaren F1 car. The British Touring Car drivers Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden were being interviewed. They turned out to be the only famous people we saw but we later saw on tv there were many more just not on the areas we went to.

On the whole it was a good day. If you want to see the cars on display and have a good look round and take a few photos without to many people in the way then it’s a good day to go to the festival of speed, as the crowds are a lot smaller. Though by late afternoon it was busier with some more famous cars having a crowd round them.

If you want to see the cars running and see famous people then the weekend would be better.
Make sure you take cash for some of the stands and ice cream vans as the cash machines were charging £2.50 to take money out.
We had to leave late afternoon so didn’t get time to see some of the other displays near the main house. Such as the super car paddock and American race car area and the Rally Area further up the hill.

Ford Focus 2001 World Rally Car Colin McRae

See more picture in the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2015 gallery