The Driver

It’s always motivating to be in a truly competitive car, but that feeling is amplified at Goodwood, not least because you’d have to race at the British Grand Prix to drive in front of a larger or more engaged crowd. It’s a real buzz. And that’s before you immerse yourself in the driving experience.

I’ll pretty much race anything, but I have a particular fondness for historic saloon and touring cars because they require you to really roll your sleeves up if you’re to get the best from them. The Giulietta is great in this respect, precise enough that you can find those vital few tenths in qualifying (so long as you resist the urge to get too wayward!), but malleable and forgiving enough that you can really throw it around when you’re battling for position. 

The trouble, if you can call it such, is if you’re driving one of the smaller four-cylinder engined cars it’s incredibly tough to race against the six and eight-cylinder Jags and Yank tanks. In qualifying there was just 0.7sec separating my 6th place time with that of pole-sitter Matt Manderson in his A40, but off the line its inevitable he - and I - were going to get mugged by the bigger, gruntier cars around us. If not into Madgwick then certainly on the run towards Fordwater. 

Where the Jags and big Ford struggle is the super-fast entry to No Name, the perilous slew through St Mary’s and the short dash to Lavant. You can get by if you screw your courage into a tight ball, but all with the knowledge they’ll come barrelling by on the Lavant straight. Naturally this doesn’t stop ambitious attempts to run round the outside at Woodocote or a lunge into the chicane, even though a successful pass is then likely to be reversed during the drag race down the start-finish straight. 

It’s demoralising, but it tees-up some epic battles as we tiddlers harass the bigger cars under braking and do our best to dive by into every single corner. Trouble is the in-fighting between the small cars is just as intense, so there’s always a danger we slow one another down and let the big boys off the hook.

Consequently there are moments when you form some unlikely alliances, in my case occasionally calling a temporary truce with Mike Jordan’s A40 to try and keep us in touch with our more powerful adversaries. All the while knowing we’ll resume battling tooth and nail if the race comes back to us. It’s all part of the fun.

The tactics, purity and intensity of the racing is unmatched in my experience. Something that’s facilitated by Goodwood’s unchanged, ultra-quick and unforgiving layout. No circuit suits pre-slicks, pre-aero historic racing better, for uncannily it seems whatever you’re racing - from Mini Cooper to Shelby Cobra - most corners are almost but never quite flat-out. 

From turn-in to exit you inhabit a realm where confidence and courage are kings. One where you have to keep your car balanced by continual applications of steering and throttle, often when inches from the rear bumper of the car in front and with another car tight alongside or right up your chuff. It makes my heart race just thinking about it, yet when you’re in those moments you never want it to end. 

This year, despite best efforts, the Thunderbird proved unbeatable in the hands of owner Bill Shepherd and guest pro, Romain Dumas. The Giulietta’s grille bears a small T-Bird shaped dent as evidence of just how close we were coming out of the chicane, while the little Alfa twin-cam’s rev counter telltale is a secret I’ll take with me to the grave. 

Combined with Signor Pirro’s 4th place finish (just 0.02sec behind Marcel Fassler’s 3rd place A40) in the Part 1 race, my 3rd place in Part 2 (behind Grant Williams and his ‘BUY1’ Jag and the aforementioned Thunderbird) we netted 3rd overall, with plenty of golden memories banked along the way. Racing really doesn’t get much better.