THE 77th GOODWOOD MEMBERS' MEETING

Hunting, Shooting and Racing

- Alan Cathcar

Britain’s annual Goodwood Revival is widely considered to be the world’s premier Historic race meeting on both two wheels, and four. It’s been held each September since 1998 over the 2.367-mile/3.809km Motor Circuit opened in 1948 by the Duke of Richmond, and laid out on a decommissioned WW2 airfield which the RAF had built on his Goodwood estate near Chichester, on England’s leafy South Downs. Catering for the bikes and cars that would have competed at the circuit before it closed in 1966, the three-day event thrills an annual sell-out crowd of 150,000 spectators, almost all in ‘60s-style period clothing. It complements the annual mid-summer Goodwood Festival of Speed founded in 1993 by the present Duke, after he took over management of the Goodwood estate from his father. Now a major event on the British social calendar, attracting a vast number of celebrities from both within and beyond the automotive world, this four-day Motoring Garden Party built around a high-speed hill-climb held over the 1.16 mile/1.87km driveway leading to the Duke of Richmond’s home, the historic Goodwood House dating from the early 1600s, also attracts a huge crowd each year, as well as massive sponsorship and marketing spend from the world’s leading major automotive concerns. It’s a Big Deal, with the two-wheeled highlight being Valentino Rossi’s Goodwood debut riding a YZR-M1 Yamaha in 2015, the day after his dramatic MotoGP Assen victory on a similar bike.