Goodwood at 75: in conversation with the Duke of Richmond

“The terrible thing, actually, I feel really awful sometimes, is when I’m walking through the paddock late on Sunday and I realise I haven’t seen any of the cars we spent so long trying to get here. It’s a big thing when you do, though, all that effort and the car has come from America or something. Things like getting the 300mph Bluebird here for the first time. Some of the big American Indy cars, too, they were a lot of work.”

Q: What’s the best race you’ve seen at Goodwood?

A: “Surtees in the 250LM, his last race at Goodwood. I’m sure we have it on film. It was like he was saying, ‘I’m just going to show you guys what I’ve had up my sleeve all this time’. He drove rings around everyone. Everyone's jaw dropped. 

“I remember him at the first Revival, too. John was there, and in one of the first practices, the clerk of the course told me I needed to speak to John. He was annoyed we weren’t allowing his time in the TT – which he was doing in Nick Mason’s 250GTO – because Nick wasn’t able to post his own time as he’d been delayed getting to the track, so John got dropped a few places on the grid.

“I explained to him that it was just a couple of places, and straightaway he started going off, ‘you remember in 1963 when Jim Clark…’ and I had to stop him and tell him it wasn’t 1963. He was so competitive, 40 years later. And then he got in the car and ran rings around everyone!”

“I think that 1948-’66 moment was a seminal moment, that post-war era. Not only in terms of racing cars, but in the history of the car and the motor industry”

Q: Your favourite driver on the track?

A: “I’d have to say Walter Röhrl, as he drove me around Goodwood and it was absolutely blistering, so it’d be him.”

Q: Favourite driver off the track?

A: “Can’t answer it, I’m too close to these people!”

Q: When the Revival started in 1998, the youngest cars at the event were just 32 years old, now they are at least 57 years old. Will the Revival ever relax its pre-1966 rule?

A: “It’s a good question. I like to explain it like music, I think there is a parallel. There was music from when you were a certain age that always holds a special place in your heart and you want to show it to your kids.

“But there are also certain moments in music that are seminal, and those are listened to by all generations. Very fortunately, I think that 1948-’66 moment was a seminal moment, that post-war era. Not only in terms of racing cars, but in the history of the car and the motor industry.

“It is difficult for us to move on from that. From a purely regulatory perspective, we’ll struggle to run cars much later. We can do a little bit later, as we do at the Members’ Meeting, but it is after all why the circuit first closed in 1966. The loose arrangement is that we run cars that ran here in period. We could push the date a bit, but it’d be reinventing the Revival.”

“Buy the best, make it last. Hand it on, don’t throw it away, keep reusing, recycling, repurposing things. These old cars are part of that”

Q: You recently said you’re less worried about the future of the classic car now than you were five years ago – what’s changed?

A: “It's got a bit less tense. Things are going to change, it's inevitable change, but I don’t think it is going to be quite as quick as we perhaps thought it would be a few years ago.

“Certainly I think that's true of autonomy. The classic car has never been that big anyway [in terms of consuming resources], it’s a passion and something people do in their spare time, mostly, and I think with synthetic fuels, there are going to be ways of making it very workable. 

“We’ve also done a lot of thinking and development around Revival, our Revive and Thrive ethos is really important. The more I’ve got immersed in that, the more I realise that these cars are like old pairs of shoes. They may be worth a lot of money, but they’ve been smashed up, rebuilt, smashed up, they don’t owe anybody anything, they’re very sustainable in that sense.

“Buy the best, make it last. Hand it on, don’t throw it away, keep reusing, recycling, repurposing things. These old cars are part of that.”

Special displays at September’s Goodwood Revival will conclude the track’s 75th-anniversary celebrations

Q: Are synthetic fuels the future for cars competing at Goodwood then?

A: “I think what is difficult for all of us, in a way, is public opinion. Public opinion isn’t necessarily right, in this instance, as it just sees it as a black and white thing. They see the cars and just think of the fuel and pollution. Synthetic fuels are a very good response to that.

“The sustainability question for us, is really about our events, and we’re getting better and better at that. The cars are nearly nought in their impact compared to everything else. The amount of power we have to produce to run our events is huge and we’ve now switched all of our generators to biodiesel, which took a bit of time.

“The story about the classic car movement as a whole? I feel much more confident about it. We all know it is better to keep your old car and run it, making the car is where most of the energy is consumed, but annoyingly that isn’t how public opinion sees it.

“But the moment you can use synthetic fuel, that’s massively helpful. We ran two cars on it at the last Revival. We’d like to run a whole race on it next – and I don't think it’ll be long before we run the whole event on it.

“It’ll be more expensive for the people taking part, but compared to what it costs to own the car, run the car and prepare the car, it’ll be a manageable number, I think. I feel good about it.”

Images: John Bradshaw/Goodwood/Dominic James/Jayson Fong

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