The next time someone claims that driving a track in Gran Turismo?or any video-game simulator, for that matter?prepared them for the real thing, ask them to pass the salt. Given the opportunity to drive Goodwood’s famous hill-climb course at the 2017 Festival of Speed, we of course had a few goes of it digitally in preparation before we caught a plane to London. Just 1.16 miles long and with seven corners, the track seems straightforward enough in Gran Turismo or otherwise. It isn’t.
For evidence, look to how many cars crash at Goodwood during the three-day Festival of Speed. These are, in many cases, priceless vintage machines. The drivers are neither inexperienced nor careless, and yet still they occasionally veer off into one of the hay bales lining the track. Stir in the occasional sprinkle of rain (this is the U.K., after all), patches of post-burnout rubber deposits from showboaters, and gobs of oil sprayed all over the track by the eclectic parade of classics puttering up its length during the weekend, and the hill-climb is downright wicked.
The hill-climb course wasn’t conceived as a racetrack. It’s just a long, narrow, and winding driveway on the estate of Lord March. Its surface is bumpy and the pavement was draped down the side of the hill with no concessions to proper camber. There is no curbing?the pavement simply ends, and grass or hay bales begin?and one of the trickier sections is framed on one side by a solid flint wall.
So...