Posts Tagged ‘WRC’

• This years Goodwood Festival of Speed was once again a cracking event, though not so for an elderly couple from Chichester, who having popped out to go to the nearby Waitrose store, found themselves in the queue for the Festival before… being safely marshalled, some 2 hours later, into a corner of one of Lord March’s fields. It then took them another 2 hours to extricate themselves and return home. They were not best pleased.

• There had to be some irony as the racing car made out of fruit and veg (see our report) conked out directly outside the ‘Eat Fat Pig’ food stall before starting it’s run up the drive. The driveshaft, the only piece of the car not from an organic source, was the only bit that broke. Sadly, it was probably the most important bit…
• The only thing worse than the carrot car was the abysmal Life 190 F1 car, which in it’s day never got past pre-qualifying. The car, bizarrely entered in the ‘High Tech F1 cars’ group managed to come down the hill well enough but it’s two attempts to go back up failed to last more than a few metres. At least it was consistent in it’s awfulness…
• The machine of the weekend was not, oddly enough a car, but the monstrous RAF Typhoon (Eurofighter) which makes a sound like continents colliding. The display was breathtaking as every person without exception stopped to watch. However, this was all happening at the same time as World Rally Champion, Sebastien Loeb, started his ascent of the hill in his Citroen C4 WRC, performing wild doughnuts without seeming to stop going forwards. It was something of an achievement to be able to watch what was going on in the air and on the ground at the same time but boy was it worth the effort.
• For reasons that were never really made clear, much fuss was made of Hollywood actor, Peter Fonda, riding a motorbike up the hill (celebrating the anniversary of one of his few films apparently) but at least it did give commentator, Marcus Pye, the chance to use the ’here comes Peter with his big chopper’ line, much to the amusement of all teenage boys present.
• F1 teams were a little thinner on the ground this year, but this was more than made up by the determination of Red Bull’s Mark Webber and Toyota’s Timo Glock, both seemingly intent on getting through as many sets of tyres as possible with huge burnouts off the line and doughnuts aplenty. Even the normally placid Pedro de la Rosa, made a plea to the organisers for more space for such antics next year.

Bring it on…