Club Motul: Goodwood Festival of Speed Round-up

Goodwood Festival of Speed brings together car and bike fans from around the world and presents them with a splicing of the old fire-spitting world a sleek and modern one with the combined celebration of one thing: automotive speed.

When you stroll amongst the crowds at FoS with hurried people in oily overalls squeezing between the spectators, you get the sense that something exciting is about to happen. For some, it might be marveling at the FMX bikes spinning through the air with their riders barely attached; for others it might be seeing a never-seen-before car or a mechanical dinosaur like the Fiat S76 Record, nicknamed the Beast of Turin, exploding up the hill; for others it will simply be noticing the price of Champagne- £19 per glass this year.

Cars of the Show

A few highlights from the cars on display was the ugly but charming and highly admired Renault R5 Diamant prototype. A car that amalgamates the unique French-ness of a marble steering wheel that isn’t actually a wheel and a 70s Barbie.

Obviously, there is the McMurtry Spéirling that generates it’s own downforce with a fan and smashed the hill record last year- spinning on the stand to a synchronized ‘Oooo’.

The King of the Auction house, owned by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, never ceases to dazzle. To the untrained eye, it’s a Ferrari. To those with phone signal and Google, it’s an “EXCUSE ME?!”, sum of money- the Ferrari 250 GTO.

Car brands so exotic and so rare that you only see them in a magazine or on the telly are quite special to see in the metal… Or, more likely, carbon fibre. For example, you don’t often see the 838bhp, carbon fibre scream-machine that is the Pagani Huayra R on the supermarket car park. Partly because you wouldn’t fit anything more than one egg in it but also because it isn’t road legal and costs £2.7 million.

Another car that falls into this category is the Koenigsegg Gemera. The latest iteration hasn’t been released yet. The innovative 2-litre 3-cylinder ‘Tiny Friendly Giant’ engine in the original combined with the electric motors only produced 1700hp. As the very restrained people at Koenigsegg decided, rightly, that these numbers wouldn’t budge the skin from a rice pudding, they plumped for a V8. The 5-litre V8 Jesko V8 in question paired with hybrid help gives a total output of 2268hp. Thank God.

Star of the Show

Formula One legends are car fans just like us. That’s why Goodwood is such a huge pull for them too. This year though, there were three Formula One legends that went up the hill using fuel that released no new CO2 into the environment. One was Nigel Mansell’s Williams FW14B Red 5. One was Ayrton Senna’s Mclaren MP4/8. One was four-time world champion, Sebastian Vettel.

Vettel’s campaign, “Race without Trace” focuses on the use of synthetic fuels. His love for motorsport has far from waned, he just wants to race more responsibly.

Our Star Prize

Motul fans raced to enter the competition for a chance to win two tickets to Goodwood FoS. Thankfully the tickets were for Sunday, after the rain and winds had forced the organisers to cancel the running on Saturday.

We hope Lucas and his wife had a great day and hopefully got to see the Jaguar skid-pan with the F-Types in action.

What’s next?

It seems a way off now, but it will come around sooner than you think. Goodwood Revival runs from 8^th-10^th of September.

Motul are the official lubricants partner of the Revival and have a specifically formulated range of classic oils that can be used in the 1948-1966 time period vehicles.

If you fancy bowling around Revival in style, then why not take a look at our vintage style MOTUL Overall Jacket or Boiler Jumpsuit?

Check them out on the Club Motul website.