THUNDER GROUND
BRITAIN’S annual Goodwood Revival, held each September since 1998 over the 3.8km Motor Circuit, first opened by the Duke of Richmond in 1948, is widely considered to be the world’s premier historic race meeting, attracting a sell-out crowd of 150,000 spectators. It complements the annual mid-summer Goodwood Festival of Speed founded in 1993, a ‘motoring garden party’ centred around a high-speed 1.9km hill-climb up the Duke’s driveway, which also attracts a massive international following and crowd.
Perhaps as an antidote to these major events, in 2014 the Duke of Richmond resurrected the Goodwood Members’ Meetings, which were club racing days for dedicated enthusiasts rather than the high-profile teams that contested the circuit’s major races. Seventy-one such meetings were staged over the 19 years of the circuit’s original existence up until 1966. Now held annually in April, it has a relaxed old-school vibe with spectators capped at ‘just’ 33,000.
Besides being a weekend of close-fought action on the track, the Members’ Meeting is a celebration of Britishness in Goodwood’s own inimitable way. Inevitably, there’s more than
