Le Mans Porsches and V10-era F1 cars punctuated heated historic racing at Goodwood’s glorious Members’ Meeting
WORDS LIZZIE POPE PHOTOGRAPHY JAMES MANN
With a return to its springtime slot, the 9-10 April 79th Members’ Meeting opened Goodwood’s 2022 season. And while the blue skies, sunshine and daffodils were signs of positivity, they’re also the colours of the Ukrainian flag, ever-present as the Duke of Richmond sought to support the war-torn country. The flag of Ukraine was flying along the pitlane and affixed to every racer as a stylish show of solidarity, alongside a fundraising appeal.
Auto Artists for Ukraine was also at Goodwood, a charitable effort founded by artists Reverend Adam Gompertz (Motoring art, August 2016) and Jonny Ambrose (March 2019), who have teamed up with others to make and sell artworks to raise money for the British Red Cross and the Disasters Emergency Committee – and it has hit £45,000 to date. “The generosity has been amazing,” said Gompertz, “we never thought we’d raise this much.”
Unlike the three-day Revival, with its extensive set-dressing and off-track sideshows, the Members’ Meeting is more about the racing – the results of which led to five-time Le Mans winner Emanuele Pirro’s Torbolton lifting the public-school-style House Shield.
There were also two evocative demonstration parades, one teasing the eyes, the other more the ears. The latter, a set of Formula One cars from the 1989-2005 ‘V10 era’ (not all of which were V10s), sent some spine-tingling multi-cylinder howls across the track. From David Brabham in the Jordan-Hart 194 he raced against in 1994, via Steve Griffiths in his Jordan-Peugeot 195, which was running for the first time since the 1995 F1 season, to Bruno Senna in a 1991 McLaren-Honda MP4/6 of the type his uncle Ayrton raced to his final drivers’ title, there was no shortage of smiles. It was probably just as well they didn’t rival the tyre smoke and shredded rubber of the drift demonstration.
Marking 40 years since the introduction of Porsche’s 956 and 962, which triumphed seven times at Le Mans, Saturday’s rapid twilight parade transported many trackside to La Sarthe as, lights ablaze, the racers took to the Tarmac for the first of two runs. Incredibly, nine of these Group C machines were provided by Henry Pearman, and the line-up included chassis 956-001, 956-002 and 956-004, the Rothmans works cars that locked out the podium on the model’s Le Mans debut in 1982.
Calum Lockie (Paddock pro
