For anyone interested in sports car racing, there are videos of various types of vintage cars racing on an interesting and challenging track in England at a place called “Goodwood.” I know little about the venue, or the overall way the races are configured, but the racing is great. I found this about 3 years ago. If I have it right, every year, in September, they have the “Goodwood Revival” which is several days of racing, with big crowds of rich people in elegant clothing, in other words, it’s quite a social event. Peculiar – but entertaining in itself.
These races are all with “historic” cars, mostly it seems from the 1950s and 1960s, though they do have some older cars. I think that many of the cars in the current races actually ran in major road races around the world 50 or more years ago, such as LeMans. And some of the drivers apparently are veterans of more recent professional racing.
The races are defined by time, not distance or number of laps. Longer races (up to 60 minutes) include a required change of drivers. In some cases, one pro driver is paired with the car’s actual (very rich) owner.
There are several “classes” of races, one from early 1900s but most seem to be 1950s and 1960’s. They also have a paved “hill climb” time trial kind of thing with a wide assortment of cars.
One annual race seems to include a wide variety from Minis to Ford Galaxies in the same race, which makes no sense to me but still somewhat entertaining. Another class is frumpy old British sedans, some of those are kind of hilarious as they try to go fast around the curvy road circuit.
I wouldn’t have posted anything here about this without having just seen a particularly exciting race. Most of the cars were Cobras and Jaguar E types, a couple Corvettes, and some others I barely recognize. This particular race was dominated by a specific red and gold Cobra which i’ve seen in previous years. If I have it right, this car was driven by Dan Gurney, probably at LeMans. It has an unmistakable bulge in the roofline to accommodate Gurney’s tall body.
This Cobra started near the back of the grid, no explanation why, with one of the very top drivers. It gradually advanced and took the lead near the middle of the race. In the last 10 minutes or so, a real challenge developed which was the most exciting racing I’ve ever seen from this track.
