Start your engines

It’s time to go back to the past with Fifth Gear ’s Tiff Needell, as he prepares to race at the classic nostalgic motoring event of the year – the Goodwood Revival

I was probably only four or five at the time, but my parents had taken me to Goodwood to watch my first motor race.

I now knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. Superheroes were sitting virtually on top of their vehicles, wrestling with the steering wheels as their cars twitched this way and that. These were brightly-coloured machines that growled and roared and emitted intoxicating fumes.

The grass bank was on the outside of the circuit between a tunnel leading to the paddock and a white-walled artificial corner called the Chicane. Sitting on Dad’s shoulders, I had the perfect view.

Scroll forwards 40-odd years to 1998 and I’m heading to the exact same spot. The slope doesn’t feel quite so steep but the view that greets me is exactly as it was. A lump comes to my throat and tears well in my eyes.

What Lord March has achieved with the Goodwood racing circuit that he inherited from his father is almost beyond description. Closed for racing in 1966, the track had stayed open for midweek test sessions, but the grandstands were gone and weeds infiltrated the grass banks. His vision was to recreate racing as it used to be for just one weekend of the year.

Come September 1998 – and my return to the reborn racing circuit – he’d succeeded. He didn’t just recreate the action on the circuit; he also insisted that everything was to be ‘as it was’. No modern vehicles, gentlemen must wear jackets and ties inside the inner paddock and ladies must also be suitably attired.

Spitfires loop the loop in the skies and, when parked on the ground, are surrounded by actors waiting to scramble. There are spivs mingling with the crowd offering dubious watches and ration books for sale. Dad’s Army is on parade and Marilyn Monroe is always somewhere to be seen. The thousands of spectators lining the circuit also join in with the nostalgic dress code, even though it is not a requirement.

In the intervening time, I’d spent more than 20 wonderful years as a professional racing driver, briefly gracing the Grand Prix grids back in 1980. But Goodwood had closed before I could race there and, despite many a day testing at the circuit, nothing could prepare me for the emotion of actually racing there.

I had been asked to drive Chris Lunn’s yellow Lister Jaguar – a 1958 sports car that I’d watched the likes of Archie Scott-Brown hustle through that Chicane. I would be racing against a certain
Stirling Moss who would be driving the actual Aston Martin DBR1 in which I’d seen him win the Tourist Trophy that same year – I really was living in my own dream.

Everyone joined in the mood of the past. Goggles and leather gloves replaced full-face helmets; fireproof ‘mittens’ were worn in place of their modern equivalents.
With Top Gear cameras accompanying me all the way, I was, for once, almost speechless with emotion as I crossed the finishing line. 

I drove the same Lister for seven more years before the owner decided I was having too much fun and got behind the wheel himself. But I drove in a variety of other cars, often sharing with their owners in the two-driver races. I was at the wheels of Jaguars of all shapes and sizes, an AC Cobra, the £3m Project 212 Aston Martin and even an ex-Jim Clark Lotus Cortina.

Even if the cars don’t excite you a t Goodwood, you can wander back to post-war Britain at its finest. Linger at the champagne tent, marvel at the period fun-fair and second-hand car lots and try to find your first family car.

Every year the programme of races slightly alters to cater for different categories and there is a different theme to the extravagant Saturday night ball. But the real beauty of the event is that nothing else really changes. It just stays as you always wanted it to be.