By Sam Cooper
July 10 2006

Goodwood Festival of Speed 2006, the Paradaise of Motorracing in the UK, and maybe all Europe, is a great experience to live. If you want to know how does it feels like and how that weekend was, just take a look at this report.

Friday, at 5 o’clock I set of to go to Southampton it’s expected to take 5 hours to get there including time for traffic.

Saturday
Its 6 o’clock and I’m going to get up for the Festival I’m extremely tired as I only got 6hours of sleep.
At 7:30 I went to get my breakfast, I had my breakfast and with my family we started to make our way o the event that we’d traveled 240 miles south to come and see.

On the short journey to the festival there wasn't that much traffic and in our Volvo s60 d5 I saw many rare cars such as Ferrari’s, Porches, Bentley’s, and the odd Aston Martins. To avoid the traffic we took the back route to the festival of speed. We did endure much traffic. From the car park it was only a 15-20 minute walk to the greatest show in motor racing. We went through the entrance gates and the atmosphere was incredible, you could not believe how lucky you were to be there it was amazing. I and my dad decided to have a look at the Lamborghini Miuras, arguably the best looking car in the world. There were the old muras and the new concept car which looked phenomenal.

I then traveled to see the pre 2nd World War cars which for their time were brilliant but now they are a tiny bit out of date. We made our way to the start line to see the sixty's cars kick off the days running; the sheer amount of noise that they made was extraordinary I couldn't believe my eyes.

After watching the cars get started for the hill climb I made my way to the f1 paddock which was full of cars that date from the 1980s to last years f1 cars, my favorite was either the BMW-Sauber F1.06, the Honda RA106 or the black John Player special Lotus which was driven by Ayrton Senna then Bruno Senna 20 years after. They also had Bennetons, Porsches and Superbikes. When the change over of classes we went over to the other side of the track to try and get a grandstand seat but to no available, however we were told that there were public grandstands that we could watch the hill climb.

There were Super bikes doing wheelies and then the f1 cars and super cars came down the hill to do their run, after that we went to view the Land Rover assault coarse, the coarse astounded me how they could abuse the car like that, it just shows how well built land rovers are because they didn’t break down, its a shame that they only do 10 miles to the gallon. I then went over to the stands; I had a look at the jcb diesel, which is attempting to beat the land speed record for a diesel powered car.

After that we went to the Rolls Royce stand where they were revealing the 101 ex, it weighs over 3 tonnes and it relies on a 6.75 liter v12 to keep it moving. It is limited to 149mph because of its sheer weight. After admiring the car for 20 minutes, I ventured over to the BMW stand where they had on display the Z4 M Roadster which is beautiful, but even better looking was the Coupe version. They had an M6 as well. Then inside they had an old BMW powered f1 car, they also had a couple of rally cars and an f1 engine. Then my attention turned to the BMW merchandise, I decided to buy an f1 BMW shirt, so I must be a BMW f1 fan.

After I had a look around some car/ f1 shops when the air show started, it was amazing the fighter jet did stunts that I thought weren’t possible to do in the plane, when the fighter stopped I went to get my lunch. After I’d eaten I went to the start line to watch the cars and bikes again, when the endurance racing cars had finished I saw another grandstand that gave you a better view of the action.

The drivers of the cars and bikes had got a feel for the circuit and were flooring the throttle, the driver of the Ford GT floored the throttle so much he spun his car into the hay but managed to retrieve the car and carry on doing the corse. The cars made that much noise I can still hear the car engine noise ringing in my ears a I write this. To finish of the day I visited the super cars and then went back to the hotel.

Sunday
On Sunday the day started slow and at the track it was greasy so the cars couldn’t go at full speed and the motor bikes couldn’t do wheelies and smoke the tires like they were doing the previous day. I arrived at the circuit at 11 o clock and went to have a look at the old 1900’s racing cars, the size of the engines was incredible one of them had a 14.2 liter engine!!. After that I went to the main track and went over the bridge to the public grandstands to watch the hill climb, by the time I had got to the grandstand it was 12 o clock and the wacky races cars went up the hill.

Shortly after that we were treated to a spectacular display by the red arrows, there are no word on how to describe this as it was mind-boggling, you really should of seen it the performance from them was jaw-dropping they were doing incredible stunts. After that there was a break in the hill climb so I went to visit the super cars again because last time I went I didn’t get any high quality pictures. The time was 1 o’clock so I decided to travel to the stalls and see what I could buy with the remaining money I had. It was a short walk to the start line where I watched Nemours cars and bikes race towards the hill.

As a nice present for my dad I thought I would buy him a couple of books for his birthday, I noticed that none other than Sir Stirling Moss was signing these books so I queued for almost an hour to get them signed but it was more than worth it, so by meeting Sir Stirling Moss it summed up how good the weekend was, it was AWSOME!!!!. Please everyone you really need to go there as it is brilliant!

Hoped you enjoyed reading my report,
Sam Cooper