Goodwood Revival Test Day - 28/08/23
Words and Images by Mitcham Media
The Mecca of classic car racing is rapidly approaching, with Goodwood Revival less than two weeks away, and as part of the lead up teams are getting the chance to spend a day testing, tweaking and trimming out every fraction of a second possible.
A hand full of sessions were made available for GRRC members to attend with the August bank holiday being the last before the main event.
With attendees being a range of entrants to the revival it meant every single on of the 15 minute sessions featured a different concoction of cars from CanAms to 911’s to open wheelers and Cobras.
A big advantage of the day was having access to areas normally cordoned off for hospitality suites giving new perspectives and photo opportunities. The favourite spot for the say was on top of the control tower with a birds eye view down onto the start finish straight with the pit lane in the back ground and a row of spectators lining the balcony above.
trying to get more background into a panning shot was a new experience and certainly provided an interesting challenge with some satisfying rewards, especially with a more front on position.
Along with the range of cars, there was also an opportunity to see behind the scenes with drivers and teams. Watching as teams tweaked and tinkered with carburettors, tyre pressures and tracking to try and eek out every second possible before heading to the pit wall with the stopwatch to see if they’re ideas had worked.
The driver line up is set to be a good one (as always) with drivers at the test day including big names from GT, LMP, Touring Car, Formula One and even a TV presenter, all of whom had their attention laser focused onto learning the track and the cars they’d be competing in while feeding back any changes they’d like to the team.
Even in the bone dry conditions pretty much everything was sliding out of every corner, pushing the crossply tyres to the absolute limit dragging out every bit of time possible.
Despite the reduced sound level restrictions (and weird looking additional silencers protruding from the rear) every car sounded phenomenal highlighting why classic racing is so good and why internal combustion brings people back to circuits year after year.
Thank you to GRRC for organising the Spectator access and allowing us to come on site while they set up the revival (which by all accounts requires a small army to build the shops, stands, stairways and much more). Also thank you to the teams, driver and owners who were so open and accepting to have vagabonds like myself wander round snapping away and asking (probably) annoying questions.
Check out more photos from the day below.
