Muscle Cars At Goodwood

For my birthday last year, The Wife bought me a driving experience at Goodwood. Having decided to put off actually doing it until the weather got a bit better, we finally headed down to Goodwood Racing Circuit on Thursday to experience the power of some American Muscle Cars.

The session was booked for Friday morning so we drove down to Goodwood on Thursday afternoon and stayed the night in the hotel there so we wouldn’t have far to go the next morning.

After registering upon arrival, the three of us that were taking part were handed our helmets and walked to the paddock, where the cars were parked. The ones that we would be driving were the Corvette C5, Dodge Viper and the new Mustang, which was the one that I was looking forward to the most as I had wanted to drive one when we did our Route 66 journey a couple of years ago.

I would have preferred to do the Mustang last, to work my way up to it, but it was the first one that I got to drove. After a quick couple of photo ops for The Wife, I jumped into the drivers seat and was given a quick debrief by the co-driver which consisted of two questions (“What car do you drive?” & “Have you done a track day before?”) and a command of “follow my instructions as you go round”.

(To be honest I was expecting a little bit more, considering when I did a track day at Brands Hatch we were given a proper 45 minute lesson on the course, driving lines, how to take corners and procedures to follow on the track.)

After the debrief, we pootled towards the track and when there was a sufficient gap for us, I pulled out and put my foot to the floor.

The first lap consisted of me trying to gauge the track and adjust for the racing lines with the co-pilot pointing out the arrows and apex signs that I had to aim for. The second lap was the same but a bit faster and then I finally got to enjoy the 3rd lap as I had it remembered and was able to really push the car around the track. The sound of the engine was just brilliant, a real roar.

Unfortunately, 3 laps was all we were allowed in each car and so it was over pretty quickly. So you actually only got one lap driving round at full speed, because you start the first lap slowly from the pits, and the 3rd lap you have to slow down to enter the pit lane right after the final corner!

Next up was the Dodge Viper, and after more photo ops, we headed out to the track once more. This time I didn’t have to waste the first lap learning the course and got stuck in straight away. The Viper is slightly more powerful than the Mustang and so I managed to get up some good speed around the course. Once again the three laps passed really quickly before it was time to hop into the last car of the day, the Corvette C5.

This was a convertible like the Viper and so you got the impression that you were going a lot faster than you actually were. While out in this car I actually managed to overtake someone which made me feel like a proper racing driver for all of about 30 seconds!

Once my time was up in the cars, we headed back to the registration area to hand in my helmet and pick up some over-priced “official” photos. We then spent some time watching other cars driving around the track, as there were other experiences going on at the same time including a supercar one and a vintage one.

Although it was fun to drive the cars around the track, I felt the the experience was over all to quickly. From the time we walked to the cars, to finishing the 3rd lap in the 3rd car was only 45 minutes. And this included some time standing around waiting for your next car to return back to the paddock. It’s not a long track and so you were getting less than 10 minutes in each car. Not great value for money IMO!

Here’s some brief highlights of the day: