The Festival of Speed is as much about the drivers as the cars. Nowhere in the
world do so many legends of the track gather alongside the machinery that
made them famous. As well as drivers from the golden years of grand prix
racing such as Sir Jackie Stewart and Sir Stirling Moss there will be a huge
number of contemporary heroes including man of the moment Lewis Hamilton.
It is not just Formula One drivers who will be gathering in the Dunhill
Drivers’ Club enclosure. The world of Superbikes will be represented by Carl
Fogarty – four-time World Superbike champion – and Terry Rymer, the first
British rider to win a World Superbike race back in 1989. Rallying will have
Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz present while American motorsport will be
represented by Lyn St James, the most successful woman in the history of
Cart racing and Al Unser Sr, the four-time winner of the Indy 500.
In fact, for the dedicated autograph hunter there are few places anywhere that
offer such rich pickings. The only problem will be recognising who’s who
without their helmets on. So to make their job easier, Joseph Dunn selects
eight faces no one can afford to miss
Lewis Hamilton
Age 22
Discipline Formula One driver
HonoursGP2 champion 2006
It was only a few weeks ago that pundits were asking whether Hamilton could
compete with Jenson Button, the other fancied British GP driver. After five
races that question changed: now they were asking whether he could become
the first rookie driver to win the world championship.
Convention says that such a spectacular rise (he finished in the top three in
his first five GP races) simply can’t continue, but all the signs are that
in Hamilton Britain has at last found a racer who may at some point in the
future be classed “a great”. He will take to the hill in one of the McLaren
team’s F1 cars, so expect a rousing reception from the partisan crowd.
Andy Green
Age 45
Discipline World speed records
Honours Holder of outright world land speed record (763mph) and diesel
powered land speed record (328.767mph) The only man to travel at supersonic
speeds while still on the ground will be at the show along with the JCB
Dieselmax streamliner that he drove last summer on the Bonneville Salt Flats
while setting a new speed record for an oil burner. Unlike many of the
drivers here, Green’s feats have been achieved on an amateur basis: his
full-time job is still with the RAF, where he works as a wing commander at
Ministry of Defence HQ in London.
He claims his motivation isn’t just the thrill of driving fast: “How do you
get kids excited about engineering if they don’t watch these cars breaking
records?” He is expected to announce at the FoS that he will be attempting a
new world record speed, for a piston-engined car, in 2008.
Colin McRae
Age 39
Discipline Rally driver
Honours Rally world champion 1995 (runner-up 1996, 1997, 2001) Rallying
runs deep in the McRae family: Colin’s brother Alister is a driver who won
the British rally championship in 1995 and his father Jimmy is a five-time
British rally champion. But McRae is probably the first rally driver to
become a truly global star. This is partly due to the massive success of the
computer games that bear his name, which have made him a multi-millionaire
(he lives in Monaco), but more especially because his battles with Richard
Burns during the mid1990s have become the stuff of legend.
Cast as the fiery Scot up against the English reserve of Burns, McRae crashed
and burnt his way into the national consciousness and briefly made rallying
a can’t-miss motorsport again. At the FoS he will be launching his McRae R4,
a road-legal rally car that he has developed and which will be sold
commercially later in the year.
Allan McNish
Age 48
Discipline Le Mans racing and Formula One
Honours Le Mans 24-hour race winner 1998, American Le Mans winner 2000,
2006 McNish’s F1 career never quite got off the ground (he started 17 races
with Toyota in 2002 with no podium finishes), but his form in endurance
sports car racing is hard to beat. Nicknamed the Flying Scotsman he is the
official sports car driver for Audi and is currently leading the title race
in this year’s American Le Mans Series. He will be at Goodwood in the R10
racer that he drives in competition: featuring a 650bhp V12 diesel engine,
the Audi R10 last year became the first diesel car to win Le Mans – the
24-hour is arguably the toughest car race in the world.
In fact the R10 driven by McNish finished third in that race. After spending
almost one hour in the pits with mechanical trouble and dropping back at one
point to 16th position, McNish and the two other drivers fought back with
the fastest lap times in the field in one of the most memorable drives.
John Surtees
Age 73
Discipline Motorcycling and Formula One
Honours Motorcycle grand prix world champion 1958, 1959, 1960 in 350cc,
and 1956, 1958, 1959, 1960 in 500cc. F1 world champion 1964 They don’t make
them like they used to. Surtees remains the only person to have won world
championships on both two and four wheels, and it seems unlikely that record
will be beaten. The son of a south London motorcycle dealer he had his first
professional outing in the sidecar of his father’s Vincent. They won the
race but when the race officials discovered Surtees’s age he and his father
were disqualified. Undeterred, he entered his first race at 15 in a
grasstrack bike competition.
After winning seven world championships on two wheels Surtees switched to
Formula One in 1960, first with Lotus and then in 1963 with Ferrari, where
he won the world championship the following year. At Goodwood watch out for
Surtees at the helm of the Honda RA300, the car that he won in at Monza,
Italy in 1967 in its first race.
Emerson Fittipaldi
Age 61
Discipline F1 and IndyCar
Honours F1 world champion 1972, 1974, IndyCar champ 1989, 1993 Brazil’s
first F1 world champion ignited a passion for racing in his home country in
the same way that Fernando Alonso’s triumphs have brought F1 to Spain. Emmo,
as he was known, took over as No 1 driver for Team Lotus in 1970 after the
death of Jochen Rindt, who was killed in practice for the Italian Grand
Prix.
He went on to become the youngest world champion in 1972, aged 25, and
regained his crown two years later with McLaren.
Fittipaldi left F1 in 1982 but two years later he made a comeback in the
American IndyCar series, winning the Indianapolis 500 twice. Emmo and his
distinctive bushy sideburns retired after a crash at the start of the US 500
in Michigan in 1996. He will be reunited at the FoS with one of his Lotus GP
cars.
Anthony Davidson
Age 27
Discipline Formula One
Honours Runner up British Formula Three championship 2001 Davidson’s
debut season in F1 has been overshadowed by the arrival of fellow Brit Lewis
Hamilton and his star performance on the grid. In truth, however, Davidson
was never going to challenge for the podium in his Super Aguri car. However,
he remains a popular figure on the F1 circuit and his team plays the plucky
underdog well, making him more likely than some to be ready to shoot the
breeze with visitors at Goodwood and sign autographs.
And if his performance at last year’s Hungarian Grand Prix is anything to go
by – when he made his debut as a television commentator by standing in for
the absent Martin Brundle – he won’t be short of a word or two. At the show
he will be leaving at the gate the Honda Civic that he uses as an everyday
car and take to the hill in a historic Williams Honda FW11 Formula One car.
Nick Mason
Age 63
Discipline Car collector
Honours Co-wrote seminal album Dark Side of the Moon.
Okay, so strictly speaking Nick Mason isn’t a racing driver. But fans of motor
sport could do worse than track down the drummer with Pink Floyd.
A confirmed Goodwood fan, Mason has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of cars
and his private collection isn’t bad either. “I have about 40 cars, of which
25-30 are what you might call serious,” he says.
This year he will be driving an Auto Union Type D for Audi. “As far as I am
concerned, this is an official works drive. If you are asked by the factory
to drive one of their cars it transports you from being an amateur to being
a proper works driver.”
His wife Annette is also a bit of a petrolhead and will be driving one of the
family’s cars, although Mason has yet to decide which one. Will it be the
Type 35 Bugatti, D-type Jaguar, Ferrari 250 GTO, or maybe the McLaren F1. . .
