Last weekend saw the great and the good of the world of motorsport congregate at Goodwood for the best garden party in the world. I was fortunate enough to be a guest of the ever-generous Simon and Adrian Wright at the event, which meant a great vantage point to watch the action and a steady supply of champagne!

There was some great machinery in action on the day – favourites of mine, like the fantastic air-cooled flat 12 powered Porsche 917 in the iconic gulf colours, as made famous by Steve McQueen in the movie Le Mans. Also, the class-winning Aston Martin DBR9, number 009 from this year’s Le Mans 24hr race.
Coincidentally (or perhaps not!) this car was also painted in the Gulf colours. As has become traditional at Goodwood, the car had not been cleaned since it crossed the line at Le Mans and was covered in the grime, oil and flies from the race. It looked really evocative and I personally think that they should leave it like that permanently!

Other interesting stuff was present in the Sunday Times supercar run – not one, but three Veyrons! The beautiful new Alfa 8C, the gorgeous Aeromax Morgan and the barking mad Mazda Furai. The new version of the Ariel Atom, the 500 was on show, as was the KTM x-bow. Having seen the price of the x-bow, I can’t imagine why you’d have one over a caterham R400, but it certainly looks dramatic!
It was a fabulous day, and I really recommend it to anyone who is interested in anything petrol-related – it’s almost certain to be being driven or ridden up the Goodwood hillclimb course.
For a further selection of photos from the day, click here. You’ll notice that some of them are taken on a canon IXUS 70, not my normal camera of choice, but I managed to flatten the battery in my EOS350d by over-using the AI-Servo focus mode. Lesson learnt…