The wettest March since 1981, and little sign of abatement over the subsequent fortnight, left its own legacy as the Duke of Richmond and Gordon welcomed Goodwood Road Racing Club subscribers and guests to celebrate the landmark 80th Members Meeting and the Motor Circuit’s 75th anniversary. Motorhomes being towed in to the competitors’ campsite by tractors on Friday was a novelty, and four-wheel-drivers lugging vehicles out of the quagmires within car parks presented further logistical nightmares.
Yet once inside there was an almost miraculous turnaround. The trackside daffodils may have been beaten up by gales, but the atmosphere changed with high-revving Cosworth V12 engines as superstar racecar architect Gordon Murray’s brand new T.33 Spider roadster and its stablemates opened the action on both days. Two sensational turbocharged BMW-engined Brabham BT52 F1 cars, which the South African designed, starred later when, almost 40 years after he won the 1983 season-closing GP at Kyalami, Riccardo Patrese experienced Goodwood for the first time from the cockpit!
First used for racing on 18 September 1948, when Australian pilot Tony Gaze’s suggestion was espoused by the current duke’s grandfather (racer and aviator Freddie March), the former RAF Westhampnett closed in July 1966. Reopened in 1998, its early-season Members Meetings are more ‘Revival Light’
