Page 138 - Paddock Life Issue 13 ADRENALINE

GOODWOOD
FESTIVAL OF SPEED
Speed is as the tittle suggests the focus of Goodwood’s Festival of Speed and what a festival it is. The event is like a huge garden party centred around a hill climb circuit, with the magnificent Goodwood House as a back drop. This well-established event keeps going from strength to strength under the
watchful eye and hands on guidance of Goodwood’s proprietor Lord March.
As we attend so many events through the summer the stand out ones tend to be the best organised and FOS is as slick as gets. From the media areas to the private lawns used by global financial institutions to entertain. This year I took along our new creative director Jenny, so having someone knew to the event gave me some purpose as I wanted to give her a one day snapshot of FOS so I needed to do the “one day” tour.
Starting in the main paddock area and moving past the holding point for the next set of cars had an electric atmosphere as lines of race cars old and new were sparking up. One of the Ferrari 250 GTOs that featured in our classics issue was there. As we moved toward the Cartier Concourse lawn the cars were like mobile works of art. Heading to the supercar paddock, we stopped by at Roll Royce. They had, as one would expect, a fabulous display and debuted the Dawn Black Badge that morning. We were naturally invited past the velvet rope of a glass of bubbles and a closer look at what is already one of our favourite cars.
The Black Badge Dawn has been given a bit more power, selectable in driving modes, but certainly not anything as vulgar as a “sport mode” the interior finish of black carbon is stunning and my favourite touch were the carbon fibre road wheels, very sexy. Rolls’ affinity with fashion and art was evident by the live art being produced on the stand by Bradley Theadore. Having met some friends on the stand we took their recommendation to check out the Lamborghini restaurant, where they had just enjoyed a great alfresco lunch, but first to the supercar paddock.
Always a buzz with the symphony of supercar engines, this ever-rotating display of the world’s finest is great spot for the modern car lover. Radical had the new RXC GTR, the brutal Zenvo Yellow GTR we drove in Finland was heading up the hill along with some world class machinery which is one of the highlights for most at FOS.
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