The Goodwood Festival of Speed is one of the central features of the motorsport calendar, and it has a famous Central Feature of its own. Every year at the event there is a grand display in front of Goodwood House, paying homage to a famous motoring marque, individual or other theme—and the feature seems to get bigger and more impressive year upon year! And Goodwood has just confirmed that at this year’s Festival, taking place on July 4-7, the Central Feature will celebrate none other than Aston Martin. It’s a particularly apt choice, as 2019 marks the 70th anniversary of Aston Martin’s first race at Goodwood, as well as the 60th anniversary of its greatest triumph in sealing the 1959 World Sportscar Championship, and this also took place at the Goodwood circuit.
Aston Martin’s debut Goodwood race was the Lavant Cup at the 1949 Easter Meeting. And, 10 years on, the 1959 RAC TT at Goodwood was that year’s world sportscar championship-deciding race. Aston Martin had gone toe-to-toe with mighty Ferrari and Porsche all year, but disaster struck the British effort early in the Goodwood showdown when Roy Salvadori and Stirling Moss’s race-leading car set alight in the pits. Moss was smartly put into the third DBR1 of Carroll Shelby and Jack Fairman, and the trio went on to win by a lap, sealing the title.
And more recently, Aston Martin has been a Goodwood Festival of Speed stalwart, with many of the manufacturer’s most important cars running up the famous Hill, from its Le Mans-winning DBR9 to the DBR1 that won the aforementioned TT in 1959. There will be a class of Aston Martin’s most important racing cars doing the same at this year’s event, while the Supercar Run will display a cross-section of the company’s current range of road cars. One of the classes in the Cartier ‘Style et Luxe’ concours d’Elegance will be dedicated to cars powered by the legendary Tadek Marek-designed Aston Martin V8 engine, which made its debut 50 years ago, in 1969.
The Central Feature will once again be designed by Gerry Judah, as he has done for the event every year since 1997. While this will be the first Central Feature to celebrate Aston Martin, at the first Festival of Speed, in 1993, its brand-new DB7, that was yet to be put into production, was displayed outside the House where the Central Feature sits today.
“It’s absolutely wonderful that Aston Martin will star for the first time on the Central Feature at this year’s Festival of Speed, presented by Mastercard,” said Festival founder and organizer, the Duke of Richmond. “Seventy years ago, Aston Martin first raced at Goodwood and, 10 years later, our histories were forever linked when it sealed the 1959 World Sportscar Championship here at Goodwood Circuit in September that year. It was also the year that Aston Martin launched its works at Newport Pagnell—2019 is a perfect time for us to celebrate Aston Martin’s past, present and future success. The Central Feature looks set to be one of the most dramatic yet, and a fitting landmark to the past century of Aston Martin success.”
Images courtesy of Goodwood and Aston Martin
