Six iconic anniversaries converge in four adrenaline-packed days—here’s what made the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2026 unforgettable.
Six anniversaries landed in the same four days: 50 years of Hunt–Lauda, 60 years of Le Mans '66, 30 years of Damon Hill's title, 75 years of Scuderia Ferrari, 20 years of the XX Programme, 100 years of Ducati — all delivered on one hill in West Sussex.
Gerry Judah's sculpture suspended three Singer machines mid-air in front of Goodwood House — Classic, Classic Turbo and DLS. His strongest design in years. Air-cooled 964 bodywork six metres up, held by a triple-arch structure that looked engineered by weight before it looked engineered by geometry.
McLaren brought the actual title-winning chassis. Fifty years to the month after Hunt's championship. The Ford Cosworth DFV V8 cutting through the trees was the sound the weekend belonged to.
Chassis P/1046 (Amon/McLaren, winner), P/1015 (Miles/Hulme, second) and P/1016 (Bucknum/Hutcherson, third) ran together up the Hill for the first time in over a decade. Sixty years of the 1-2-3 finish that ended Ferrari's Le Mans reign, honoured by the exact three cars that put it there. The rarest moment of the weekend.
Thirty years since he won it. He drove it up the Hill across the weekend and sat in the FOS Fan Zone Q&A. The Williams FW18 is still a beautiful car; the way Hill drove it made the point again.
Scuderia Ferrari's 75-year F1 anniversary was marked by a Corse Clienti timeline gathered from 1951 forward. The 20th anniversary of the XX Programme brought its cars together in the same paddock.
The three Ferrari dynamic Hill debuts:
„A Century Made of Seconds." Carl Fogarty, Casey Stoner, Troy Bayliss, Shane 'Shakey' Byrne, Josh Brookes, Dario Marchetti — on the first-floor Balcony together. Alongside them, current WorldSBK riders Álvaro Bautista and Nicolò Bulega. For anyone with a superbike memory, the collective walk-out was worth the four days on its own.
Apollo EVO in production trim. First delivered example is the „Caribbean Dragon" in white over blue. 800 hp naturally aspirated 6.3-litre V12. Ten built, all track-only.
Maserati Project GT4 — world premiere. Developed by Maserati Corse on the GranTurismo architecture. Signals where Maserati wants its racing programme to sit after a decade of unclear direction.
Bugatti Bolide by Lanzante — Woking-converted for road use. Rare, and a Lanzante story as much as a Bugatti one.
Also in the debut fleet: HWA EVO Prototypes 04 and 05 (the Mercedes 190E EVO successors) and the facelifted Maserati Grecale, GranTurismo and GranCabrio 2027 lineup.
Lando Norris on the first-floor Balcony with nine-time MotoGP world champion Valentino Rossi. Engineered by Monster Energy, most-photographed moment of the weekend. Earlier that afternoon, Norris drove the McLaren MCL60 up the Hill; Rossi drove the BMW V12 LMR — the LMP that won Le Mans in 1999.
Four-time King of the Hill Romain Dumas returned in Ford's Super Mustang Mach-E — 1,400 PS, three motors, the Pikes Peak machine. In practice he sat within a second of Dan Ticktum in the Formula E Gen 4 car. The McMurtry Spéirling was there too — its 39.08-second record from 2022 still the number the Hill measures itself against.
Eight current F1 teams ran across the four days: Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, Alpine, Racing Bulls, Williams, Aston Martin — with Norris, Antonelli, Hadjar, Gasly, Colapinto, Lindblad and Lawson at the wheel.
Most events on the calendar reward one archetype well. Goodwood is one of the few that serves all four at once.
The Racer got the Shoot-Out, the Hunt M23D, and the sound of every era's racing V8 climbing the same hill.
The Connoisseur got the Judah sculpture reveal, the Ferrari Amalfi debut, and the paddock detail that rewards slow looking.
The Collector got the reunited Le Mans '66 trio, the Hill FW18, and 75 years of Scuderia Ferrari machinery gathered in one place.
The Showstopper got the Balcony — twice, once for Ducati's centenary and once for Norris and Rossi.
Three reasons this works. Editorial curation — the Duke of Richmond and his team apply one editorial hand across every element, so each archetype gets a moment engineered specifically for them. Range of eras — a 1936 Auto Union in the same paddock as Norris' 2023 McLaren, every decade of provenance within walking distance. The estate itself — an inherited house on a hill in West Sussex adds a form of provenance the standalone brand events don't have.
Villa d'Este belongs to the Connoisseur and Collector. Pebble Beach the same, with a Showstopper corner. Mille Miglia the Collector and Racer. Goodwood is uniquely wide.
Most festivals grow by scale. Goodwood grows by care.
(Photo: F1)
Written by
Philipp Lauterbach is the founder of DRIVTO, the curated identity and discovery platform for the European sportscar scene. Based in Düsseldorf, he has been building sportscar communities since August 2018 — first through the Cars+Coffee format in Düsseldorf, Cologne, Berlin, Mönchengladbach, and on Sylt, and since mid-2024 through DRIVTO as a platform with its own editorial magazine and proprietary DriverDNA methodology.
His path into the sportscar world began with an event-management apprenticeship inside a Mercedes-Benz dealer group. From there he moved into marketing roles at Ferrari and Maserati in Düsseldorf, where he became one of the defining marketing voices for these brands in Germany at the time. That phase also gave him his first direct contact with the Cars+Coffee movement — and the affinity for Italian cars that still shapes him today. Ferrari and Pagani have been at the center of what he himself seeks as a driver ever since.
Before DRIVTO, he established the Cars+Coffee stations across several German cities — an independent event series that at its most active phase connected more than 1,500 sportscar drivers across the DACH region. The DRIVTO driver community grew out of that base. His editorial focus sits on the pillars Cars Connect People (personal founder voice, driver stories) and State of the Scene (data-grounded market analyses, industry essays).
