Why ‘pointless’ Goodwood mattered to Formula 1

1948 Goodwood Trophy

The very first race meeting at the Motor Circuit was held on 18^th September 1948. As Motor Sport’s Bill Boddy reported: “In beautiful if rather chilly weather, white clouds flecking a clear blue sky and casting shadows on the sun-lit Sussex hills in the background, practice passed off smoothly for the first meeting at the Junior Car Club’s new road circuit at Goodwood.”

Reg Parnell claimed the honour of becoming Goodwood’s first F1 winner, his Maserati 4CLT/48 seeing off Bob Gerard’s ERA over just five laps for the Goodwood Trophy, at 80.56mph. Meanwhile, young Moss won the 500cc race, beginning his own special love affair with the Motor Circuit. Parnell, who never won a World Championship Grand Prix, went on to score a clutch of F1 successes at Goodwood, none more significant than the one he landed in September 1950, in a car that carried the weighty hopes of a nation.

1950 Goodwood Trophy

The BRM P15 V16’s supposed debut at Silverstone had turned into a gremlin-induced fiasco, so there was pressure from both a scathing press and public when it pitched up at Goodwood on 30^th September. That day, Parnell revived hopes — erroneously as it turned out — that the shrieking V16 really could vanquish the Italian factories for Britain in the newly formed World Championship, with a pair of victories in the Woodcote Cup and Goodwood Trophy. Little did anyone know… Talk about glorious failure.

1952 Richmond Trophy

During the World Championship’s two-year spell when it ran to Formula 2 regulations, Goodwood was among the venues to still offer a playing field for F1 cars. At the 1952 Easter meeting, the presence of reigning World Champion Juan Manuel Fangio and José Froilán González raised the stakes, but golden-haired Mike Hawthorn stole most of the thunder.

Having grabbed just a half-hour’s sleep after working through the night cutting new valve-seats for his Cooper-Bristol F2, he won the Lavant Cup easily, then beat Fangio – in a misfiring Cooper – in the Chichester Cup, and finished a fine runner-up to González’s Ferrari 375 in the main race, the Richmond Trophy. Moss won the 500cc race, but this was Hawthorn’s day. By 1953, just two years since his circuit racing debut in a Riley, the Farnham Flyer would be anointed a works Ferrari F1 driver.

1954 Richmond Trophy

This was one of Goodwood’s best and most memorable period races. Having twice been denied victories earlier in the day, Roy Salvadori now found his Maserati 250F bottled up behind the oil-spraying BRM V16 of an elbows-out Ken Wharton. On the penultimate lap, frustrated Salvadori made a lunge at Lavant — and the result was contact. Both cars spun and restarted, only for Salvadori’s Maserati 250F to destroy its clutch.

Wharton took the win, but with a face like thunder. Salvadori’s Gilby Engineering team protested the victory (not exactly cricket at Goodwood) not because of the collision, but because BRM had swapped Wharton and Ron Flockhart between its cars. Yet the result remained unchanged. Later, to cool tempers, the Duke of Richmond sent Salvadori an engraved silver cigarette case to thank him for “the splendid show.” He sent one to Wharton, too.

1955 Glover Trophy

A year later, Salvadori was back for a ‘spin and win’. Pitched as an all-Maserati duel between ‘Salvo’ and Moss, the former’s Gilby Engineering 250F had a clear performance edge, only for Roy to seemingly hand Stirling the win with a spin at the chicane on lap two. But then, Salvadori charged back on to Moss’ tail and stormed past at Madgwick as Moss began to slow with fuel feed trouble. The man credited with the famous quote “Give me Goodwood on a summer’s day and you can keep the rest,” had his third win of the day to go with a pair of second places. Quite the trophy haul.

1956 Glover Trophy

Motor Sport billed this as “a magnificent ding-dong battle” between Hawthorn’s BRM, Moss’s Maserati and the remarkable Archie Scott Brown, who almost won the day for Connaught. Defying severe disability that affected his legs, and without fingers on his right hand, Scott Brown was sensational on this, his F1 debut. He led Moss for 16 laps despite failing brakes until a broken crankshaft caused him to spin. Meanwhile, Hawthorn had a lucky escape when he was thrown from his BRM which then overturned. Literal thrills and spills at Glorious Goodwood.

1960 Glover Trophy

The writing was on the wall. Having first tasted defeat in Rob Walker’s Porsche F2 to Innes Ireland’s Lotus, Stirling Moss found himself beaten again by the same man in the main 42-lap F1 race. “Now Moss really met his match, for always Ireland in the new Team Lotus car was ahead of the 1959 Walker Cooper,” read Motor Sport’s breathless report. “Moreover, Innes looked calm, expressionless, whereas Stirling was hard at work, inner front wheel lifting, tail hanging out on the corners.

Half-distance came, but still Moss hadn’t passed. He began really to pile on the pressure but to no avail. He would close up on the Lotus’ tail at Lavant but Ireland, driving with notable consistency, would pull away down the straight and hold his advantage to Fordwater, his low, compact car holding the road magnificently. At the finish the Lotus had 2.8sec in hand, having averaged 100.3mph, a race record. Moss had lapped fractionally quicker, establishing a new lap record of 102.13mph. A great race!”

By Monaco the following month, Moss had his own Type 18, in Walker blue, to score Lotus’ first points-paying F1 win. Everything began to change — all in the wake of that Goodwood defeat.

1961 Glover Trophy

In the first four-wheeled race he had ever seen, motorcycle king John Surtees finished second to Jim Clark in a Ken Tyrrell-run Formula Junior in March 1960. Now, a year later, in a Yeoman Credit Cooper, here he was in a no-holds-barred duel with Stirling Moss in his Walker Lotus. Moss pressed Surtees hard until the 29^th lap, when the Lotus slowed with a sick engine. Thus, Surtees won the Glover Trophy, to the delight of Reg Parnell, who was now tasting renewed F1 success at Goodwood as a team manager.

1962 Glover Trophy

Moss never wavered in his love for Goodwood, the scene of so many of his great racing moments, even though the circuit was also where his frontline career came to a violent and abrupt halt, on Easter Monday, 23^rd April 1962. He’d been forced to pit his Walker-owned Lotus, on loan to UDT-Laystall, with gear selector trouble and, having resumed three laps down, naturally set about breaking the lap record.

How it happened, as he approached St Mary’s on the tail of race leader and eventual winner Graham Hill in the BRM, remains vague, but it doesn’t matter now. As worried spectators listened to the clanging bell of the ambulance rushing Moss to the Royal West Sussex Hospital in nearby Chichester, little could they have known one of the great F1 careers — and a whole era for British motorsport — had come to a crashing end.

1964 News of the World Trophy

How about this for a front row? Jack Brabham, Jim Clark and Graham Hill, in Brabham, Lotus and BRM. It’s just a shame Ferrari reneged on its promise to be there, robbing John Surtees of the chance to join the fun. On this occasion, Hill appeared to hold the upper hand as Clark managed a clutch problem, but on lap 40 of 42 the BRM coasted in with a broken distributor. Brabham was already long gone thanks to a broken rear wheel that caused him to the hit the banking, so Clark coaxed it to win.

1965 Sunday Mirror Trophy

Ahead of the News of the World-backed race in 1964, a young Jackie Stewart had scored a runaway victory in the Formula Junior race. Now here he was, lining up against Clark, Hill and Brabham’s Dan Gurney (Ferrari again stayed away). Clark passed early leader Hill, “the new 32-valve Climax engine, with its short exhaust pipes and megaphone ends, making an exciting new sound as it ran to 10,000rpm,” according to Motor Sport.

Stewart ran third behind Gurney until he had to stop on lap 38 with a broken engine, but not before he’d scorched to a new lap record of 1:20.4. Then in the closing stages, Clark matched the time exactly to the tenth.

Fittingly, the two Scots — the best of their generations as well as the best of friends — would share the record for ever after. This was Goodwood’s last contemporary F1 race, with the circuit closing its doors to racing (at least for the next 32 years) in early 1966. F1 life would never be the same without it.

The 2025 Festival of Speed takes place on 10^th-13^th July. Friday and Saturday tickets are now sold out, but Thursday and limited Sunday tickets are still available.

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