Having given you a clue as to why I love the atmosphere at Goodwood so much, let's turn to the racing which spans the ages. The first race on the Saturday morning is the Goodwood Trophy, open to Grand Prix cars that raced between 1930 and 1950. Here we see cars models of which I played with in the sandpit in my youth, with which I created race tracks in the hillocks in the garden, and it was always the light blue ERA (English Racing Automibles) that won. This car was part of a piar of cars that belonged to Prince Bira of Siam named Romulus and Remus but without doubt Remus is the most famous and races today. A howl of a supercharged engine with one whopping SU (Skinners Union) carburettor - see the photo. In this race you find other cars like the Alfa Romeo Tipo B, the Alta, Bugatti type 54, Maserati 8CM, an original Maybach, and Talbot Lago. Cars where the drivers sat high in their monoposto cars without seat belts, wrestling gainfully the wheel as they fought to control the sliding skinny tyres on opposite lock.
The second race is the Chichester Cup, 14 laps for Formula Junior cars that raced between 1958 and 1960 comprising cars such as Elva, Lola-Ford, Mallock, OSCA, Stanguellini and Volpini. This isn't of too much interest to me (each to his own tastes but if I get sufficent interest I'll take some next year and publish them for you) but is interesting racing just the same.
The history of post war racing in the UK starts with the Formula 500 cars, powered by Norton and BSA single cylinder motor cycle engines, and to show that this is sometimes dangerous have a look at the series of photos I took in 1998. He got out with a fractured collar bone - lucky.
I have to stop here since, although I would like to carry on and write loads, the site only allows me to post four photos at a time which is a shame. I would like to continue and have a separate site where you could correlate the photos but it doesn't seem possible. If you can show me otherwise I'll gladly set it up this way. Anyway, I'll give you a day or so to digest these and then I'll carry on. Hope you like them, but if you don't like the way I am writing I am open to criticism and would welcome it. Tell me what you prefer to see!