Cars and stars from the 2026 Goodwood Members’ Meeting

The 83rd Goodwood Members’ Meeting wasn’t all about the race winners. As ever, demonstrations, special guests and unusual cars added to the spectacle.

Some machines hit the track with verve, while others – sadly – didn’t get very far before suffering problems. But all added to the Goodwood colour.

Here are some of our highlights from the 2026 Members’ Meeting.

Hunt and Sheene celebrated

Goodwood’s Motor Circuit was awakened by motorcycles on Saturday morning as celebrations marking 50 years since flamboyant Britons James Hunt and Barry Sheene from polar opposite backgrounds were crowned world Formula 1 and 500cc Motorcycle racing champions.

Yes, 1976 was an extraordinary year as fans and the public got behind the dashing long-haired chain-smoking Marlboro McLaren and Heron-Suzuki team leaders, rarely out of the mainstream media – daily newspapers back then – for their sublime sporting abilities or party lifestyles. Superstars in parallel fields, they died a decade apart, in 1993 and 2003, aged 45 and 52 respectively, but what legacies they left.

Nowhere else on Earth are homages paid as beautifully as at Goodwood, where Sheene won his final race at the 2002 Revival, pipping his great friend Wayne Gardner by 0.01 seconds. Event host His Grace the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, whose grandfather opened the family seat’s RAF Westhampnett aerodrome to racing in September 1948, spoke eloquently as ever about fallen heroes. Onlookers had lumps in their throats and tears in their eyes as cavalcades of cars and bikes spanning James and Barry’s careers brought the hallowed circuit alive on both days.

Iconic McLaren M23 and number 7 Suzuki RG500 took centre stage, but the howl of three-litre Ford Cosworth DFV V8 engines as Hesketh 308 and McLaren M26 joined such immediately identifiable rivals as a six-wheeled Tyrrell P34 on track animated onlookers of all generations.

Button takes centre stage

For many youngsters, teenagers downwards, their first sight of 2009 F1 world champion Jenson Button exercising Ross Brawn’s magnificent eponymous BGP 001 will become indelible memories.

All three chassis were present and, as Jenson – a Goodwood devotee and fan favourite since his Renault days at the Festival of Speed – unleashed the only runner’s shrill high-revving Mercedes-Benz V8 engine for the first time since 2019, his emotions overflowed too. An utterly magnificent moment for an iconic team reunited.

Button had a wonderful weekend on-track, scoring an against-the-odds Phil Hill Trophy win in his ex-Dick Protheroe Jaguar E-type CUT 8, its plexiglas rear hatch lid full of Ferrari 250 LM and Ford GT40, Le Mans rivals of the mid-1960s.

Fifth in Saturday evening’s Protheroe Cup GT race in an earlier 1962 E, Jenson also saddled David Clark’s famous Bastos Chevrolet Camaro to second in Sunday’s Gordon Spice Trophy saloon feature with Scot Andrew Smith. In stark contrast to the delicate oversteery balancing acts that cajoled the best from the narrow-tyred Jags, the lumbering American brute widened his eyes to understeer as he muscled it round in the wake of double Le Mans vainqueur Romain Dumas’ thunderous Ford Mustang. 

Huff unstoppable in Super Touring Shoot-Out

Rob Huff was at his brilliant best throughout the weekend, the 2012 World Touring Car champion taking pole for the Protheroe Cup E-type race and winning the Win Percy Trophy with Dave Devine in a Ford Escort RS2000. But his fastest laps came in the inaugural Super Touring Trophy Shoot-Out.

The popular two-litre tin-top era of the 1990s was celebrated by a demonstration and off-track displays of machinery from Alfa Romeo, Audi, BMW, Ford, Honda, Nissan, Peugeot, Vauxhall and more. And the meeting’s one-lap Shoot-Out treatment included former stars in some special cars.

Huff set the pace throughout practice and qualifying in a Vauxhall Vectra from 2000, towards the very end of Super Touring. His 1m22.452s (103.91mph) lap in the final, set on wet tyres, was remarkably two seconds outside Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart’s contemporary period lap record, set on Easter Monday 1965 in 1500cc F1 Lotus-Climax 25 and BRM P261 V8s respectively.

Rob Huff

Photo by: Gary Hawkins

Jackson shows his tin-top class

Denied a drive in the Volkswagen Golf GTI that broke under Le Mans legend Tom Kristensen while leading Saturday’s Win Percy Trophy opener, 31-time British Touring Car race winner Mat Jackson demonstrated his skill by leaping into team owner Jim Morris’s second-string Scirocco on Sunday.

The midlander put it on pole with a 1m29.694s shot – quickest across both grids – and won a tight race. Coming from 25s down after Karl Jones’ 10th on day one (“I went from first to fourth gear off the line”), Jackson did superbly well to earn the combo third on aggregate.

Unusual exotica, old and new

The paddock harboured fascinating cars aplenty. Lanzante’s ‘pit garage’ showcase centred on the world debut of its bespoke McLaren-derived three-seater 95-59 hypercar, powered by an 850bhp four-litre twin-turbo V8 engine, and a stunning TAG Turbo 911. Test driver Kenny Brack demonstrated the prototype 95-59 – its designation from the 1995 Le Mans-winning #59 F1 GTR – in camouflage, though Dean Lanzante emphasised that production models will look different once delivery of a planned run of 59 starts next year.

Spotted nearby was a more affordable Dallara Stradale from Italy’s race car manufacturing king. The 2.3-litre four-cylinder turbocar’s delicious lines were accentuated by a wonderfully lustrous green ‘fish skin’ carbon fibre finish.

Under the racing stalls, which sheltered cars and crews from dawn-to-dusk sunshine, warm out of the wind, there was much to relish too. Historic F2 Tecno racer Julian Stokes debuted his newly restored ex-Tino Brambilla 1967 1000cc F3 version following a long restoration.

Driving it and seeing the track for the first time in qualifying on Sunday morning, the Oxfordshire precision engineer did well to finish 12th in the Derek Bell Cup.

At the opposite end of the age and size spectrum, Josef Rettenmaier’s 1921 Sunbeam II TT car returned to competition for the first time since 1969, when Guy Shoosmith raced it in Vintage Sports-Car Club events. Tin-top fans also caught glimpses of commentator Ed Foster’s 1976 TWR BMW 530i and Nick Jarvis’s rare American Motors Corporation AMX in Floridian Amos Johnson’s colourful livery.

Troubled visitors

Ferrari-engined Lotus at Goodwood Members’ Meeting

Photo by: Jeff Bloxham

Visiting Danes had a tough weekend. Jakob Viggo Holstein’s unique three-litre Ferrari V12-engined Lotus 23, configured by the US-based Rosebud Racing Team and crashed by Innes Ireland at Riverside in 1963, was extensively damaged in a Bruce McLaren Trophy race-stopping crash.

Jan Magnussen, a late entry in a 1964 Huffaker Genie-Oldsmobile, another Californian confection, did not get that far. Unrun in years, its synchro gearbox ailed in qualifying and did not afford the F1 veteran and Historic Turner racer a flying lap of a circuit he’d not previously encountered.

The Members’ Meeting ended on an altogether happier note when fellow Dane Kristensen, captain of Darnley House, lifted the multi-discipline trophy to which drivers, riders and eventgoers scored through a plethora of school ‘sports’ on and off track. Darnley, originally led by the late Jochen Mass, outpointed Dario Franchitti’s Torbolton, Marino Franchitti’s Methuen and Andy Priaulx’s Aubigny teams.

Jan Magnussen, 1964 Huffaker Genie-Oldsmobile

Photo by: Jeff Bloxham

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