Top 25 Goodwood Festival of Speed Moments. Year One

To commemorate this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard’s Silver Jubilee, Goodwood Road and Racing is producing 25 videos, each highlighting a favourite personal memory of the Duke of Richmond from 25 years of the ultimate summer garden party.

Goodwood Festival of Speed: Year One

Only expecting a maximum of 3000 spectators through the gate, the Duke of Richmond and his team were incredibly nervous waking up on the morning of that sunny Saturday in June. The sight that greeted the Duke as he opened his bathroom window has since gone down in Goodwood folklore.

“Man, they were just pouring in,” reflects His Grace. “They were pouring up Cathedral Walk towards the House like a stampede. By which time, of course, they’d already broken the fence down… We didn’t have a proper fence around the site anyway and people had heard about it from all over the area and were just pouring in. We don’t really know how many were there but we suspect about 25,000 actually came that weekend.”

The Festival of Speed was attracting some of the most recognisable names and faces even in its debut year, with music legend George Harrison turning up completely unannounced, having paid his entry fee, and fly-parking within the Festival site – much to the dismay of an unexpecting Lord March!