- The popularity of the U.K. Goodwood Festival of Speed and Revival events has encouraged the idea of holding something similar in the U.S.
- On the heels of starting a U.S. chapter of the Goodwood Road Racing Club, the Goodwood team is targeting its first U.S. event at Willow Springs in California in 2028 and could expand to other parts of the country later.
- The Duke of Richmond spoke with Car and Driver about the philosophy behind the plans.
I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know the proper form of address when speaking to an English duke. I think it’s “Your Grace,” but since most of my experience with dukes comes from Regency romances or Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, I’m really not prepared for any experience with nobility that doesn’t involve marriage schemes or drug smuggling. Luckily, Charles Gordon-Lennox, Duke of Richmond, introduced himself as “Charles,” and he was so eager to tell me how much he was enjoying the desert landscape around Willow Springs Raceway that I never had a chance to biff his title.
The duke was in California at the Willow Springs Reimagined event to share some exciting news. Fans of the famous U.K.-based Goodwood Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival (which are held on the Duke of Richmond’s family estate) can look forward to a U.S. version that will bring together elements of the hill-climb, the costumes, and the vintage races to Willow Springs, and later (if all goes well) to the rest of this big old country. “Between you and me,” the duke said when I asked if there were plans to expand beyond California, “the heat map [of the U.S.] looks a bit frightening. It’s like, oh my God, we want everyone to feel part of it. But the great thing is, you know, you guys [Americans] travel a lot, so that’s good.”
At the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
You’ll have time to plan your road trip. The U.S. event isn’t planned until the latter half of 2028, which should give Willow Springs time to complete more of its renovations, and give the duke time to get his invitations engraved. In the meantime, the Goodwood team is launching a U.S. chapter of its Goodwood Road Racing Club membership, which will mirror the U.K. version, offering discounts on Goodwood events and merchandise, early access to events, and special members-only experiences.
C/D: Has there always been a relationship between Goodwood and U.S. car culture?
CGL: We started the Festival of Speed in ’93. Even then, we loved American cars and car culture. To get American cars that no one had ever seen to Festival of Speed was a big step at the beginning. Goodwood is a transatlantic relationship with cars.
I remember one year at Festival, a guy told me, “I’ve come all the way from Chicago. I’ve come to see the Chaparrals.” I think this was before the Midland foundation, so you couldn’t even see them in America if you didn’t know someone. We persuaded Jim [Hall] to come and bring the car, and that was a big moment. I’ve got his hat. His hat sits on my bookshelf.
Do you have a favorite moment from Goodwood? Something you’re proud of?
When we had the W165 Mercedes running for the first time. You know, it won the Tripoli Grand Prix in 1938. This car arrives, it’s a tiny, unbelievably complicated thing, and it comes straight out, wins the Tripoli Grand Prix, and then disappears, never gets seen again. And the next time it ran, the next time it was seen, was when Mercedes rebuilt it for us.
Ford GT40s at the Goodwood Revival.
We were very excited to have the three Le Mans GT40s this year. All actually running together. I like trying to pull off those one-off moments and trying to give people a shiver. That’s an important part of it all. When you see 10 Porsche 917s all lined up together, that looks pretty cool as well. We had all the Bugatti Royales together once, except for one, which is quite annoying. Actually, that one was in America.
What a betrayal.
Yeah, it was a disappointment we didn’t get that one.
Which is more challenging to organize, Festival of Speed or Revival?
Oh, the Festival is much more difficult. Revival is easy; the racers all want to race. Revival is finished and down the entry list before Festival of Speed has hardly started with the planning.
Revival has some regulars in it, right? You have a special field or two, but most of the classes are repeated, so you’re going to get to see the Galaxies running with the Minis most years. That must make it easier to plan.
Yes, there are some staples, cars that raced there originally. Festival is more radical. If we’re having a celebration of something, then we really need to get those cars, or it doesn’t work.
Something people love about both Festival and Revival is that the drivers go so hard. They really send it in these valuable cars. Is that something you encourage, or is it just natural to the kind of people who participate?
I think it’s very competitive. The cars are very well prepared. The drivers want to race. They don’t want to drive around. If anything, we’re trying to slow them up. We want to create something very entertaining. We know all the drivers. We know every car. We know the lap times they’re capable of. We’re putting races together so that they’re good races. Just because your car is eligible doesn’t mean you can race. You’ve got to be fast enough.
The Lavant Cup at this year’s Goodwood Revival.
Let’s talk about bringing Goodwood here. Were you familiar with Willow Springs as a racetrack before the recent buyout and redesign?
Never been here, no. The first time we came was when we started thinking about doing this, which was earlier this year.
What were your first impressions coming here? It must feel very different from the Goodwood estate.
CGL: The landscape is obviously very different. The landscape is fantastic. We’re embracing the desert. But it’s not that different really, because Goodwood was very like this 35 years ago. It was all pretty run down. It didn’t look like much. It was all rusty and tatty, and I’m hoping, as we did there, we can play a part in the restoration to bring Willow back as a really great, real American racetrack, bringing it back to life and not just knocking everything down. We don’t want to see it looking like every other race.
There are lots of similarities, bizarrely, between here and Goodwood. The tracks are about the same length. The average speed is fast. They’ve both got proper history. Ken Miles tested here. Testing was done on the GT40 at Goodwood. We could do something with a transatlantic coming together of the Shelby Cobra. That is a whole British-American phenomenon.
Do you have a timeline for when all this will happen?
It starts with the Goodwood Road Racing Club. That will go live early next year, and there’ll be a whole program of activity for members. And then that will build up to an event here in fall, October, probably 2028.
C/D: What other activities is the American Goodwood Club looking at elsewhere in the States?
CGL: New York looks pretty active. Miami, Florida, looks pretty active. We’ve got lots of friends in Florida. We’ve got 30,000 members, and there are quite a lot here. But we’re definitely starting in California. That’s where the heart of car culture is.
What are your goals for Festival of Speed and Revival as you start this new chapter? Where can it go from here, or where would you want it to go?
We’ve not really ever tried to make it go anywhere. We’re really focused on the content. People say, “How do you get it better every year?” Well, we don’t really. It’s nice of them to say that, but we’re not really trying to make it better every year. I mean, it’s nice if we can do it better, but the spirit of Goodwood is about shared experience. It's about trying to give everyone access, make everyone feel good about it, whether they spend, you know, $50 [to watch] or if they are there to race. I want them to feel that it is really good value. The opposite of the Grand Prix, where you can’t go anywhere, and you can’t get close to the cars and chat to the drivers.
And the goal is to do something similar here at Willow?
Let’s get some great cars that people might not otherwise have seen. Let’s get some real good racing going, mix up the professionals with the “gentlemen” drivers, and hopefully people will like it, and it’ll get bigger. We’re not trying to bring England to America or anything. We love this track because [he stops, waves to the window behind us], I mean, look at the mountains. It’s proper California.
It is a good backdrop for driving.
Someone said to me the other day, “I’ve got all these cars, but I don’t really know what to do with them anymore. I love them, but I don’t really know what I can do with them now.” We want to give people that opportunity to be really happy getting their car out of the garage. It’s about using cars and enjoying them.
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Like a sleeper agent activated late in the game, Elana Scherr didn’t know her calling at a young age. Like many girls, she planned to be a vet-astronaut-artist, and came closest to that last one by attending UCLA art school. She painted images of cars, but did not own one. Elana reluctantly got a driver’s license at age 21 and discovered that she not only loved cars and wanted to drive them, but that other people loved cars and wanted to read about them, which meant somebody had to write about them. Since receiving activation codes, Elana has written for numerous car magazines and websites, covering classics, car culture, technology, motorsports, and new-car reviews. In 2020, she received a Best Feature award from the Motor Press Guild for the C/D story "A Drive through Classic Americana in a Polestar 2." In 2023, her Car and Driver feature story "In Washington, D.C.'s Secret Carpool Cabal, It's a Daily Slug Fest" was awarded 1st place in the 16th Annual National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards by the Los Angeles Press Club.