Doug Nye: One man's Members' Meeting

In my case last weekend, I reported for Goodwood duty on the Friday, rather surprised at being directed onto the circuit which was being used for car parking during set-up. I found a slot at the end of the Woodcote run-off area, close by the sparkling new water-filled chicane walls… now so much developed from the wooden trolley sections my big brother made for the inaugural Revival Meeting back in ’98. Hopping over the tyre wall and spectator fence I strolled round to the Bonhams marquee to see my colleagues setting up there, and then into the paddock to find the Goodwood team and take my orders, if any were forthcoming. They weren’t really – just help out in the commentary tower if and when available. So I did that, and I wandered around the paddocks, variously meeting and greeting and being told cheerfully to push off (all as standard). We talked of poor luckless Henry (so painfully missed) and of prospects for the weather since Friday was so sun-soaked and gloriously Spring-like.

And then back into Bonhams where I had to get my head around two twenty-to-thirty minute presentations, I had been asked to make on the Saturday there. One was for the ex-Jim Clark Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato ‘2 VEV’ – really one of only three MP209 Project Car chassis under aerodynamically-improved Zagato bodywork, and so extremely rare and in demand. The other was for the ex-Richard Shuttleworth 1934 Alfa Romeo Tipo B Monoposto Grand Prix car, winner of the inaugural Donington Grand Prix in 1935. 

Over my long life in racing I’ve been steeped in Alfa Tipo B history since I was about six years old, and the Aston of course since period in ’62 – my last full year as a schoolboy, all covered in school pudding and ink (some things, Mrs Nye will sigh, never change…). So waffling on about two such iconic yet very different cars wasn’t a problem. In fact, after the Saturday Aston talk a gentleman detached himself from the crowd, approached me and said: “Mr Nye, I have had contact with this car before”. “Oh really, how interesting”, I replied, “Do tell?”. And he continued “Well you see my name is Benson, Robin Benson, and I was the driver who crashed into ‘2 VEV’ and John Surtees’s Ferrari late in the ’62 TT when they were lying already bent on the verge at Madgwick…”

Boy, what a research breakthrough this was. Very pleasant, self-effacing gentleman he seems too. The owner and co-driver of his ex-Walker/Moss 1961 TT-winning 250 GT SWB car at the time was Chris Kerrison “… and he was really very good about it. But the person who was most upset was Colonel Ronnie Hoare of Maranello Concessionaires since I‘d done a lot more damage to his already crashed Surtees GTO. I got the most fearful rollicking from him. But by that time there wasn’t much I could do about it. It had been late in the race and I think I just lost concentration over the hump at Madgwick. I contributed to the cost of Kerrison’s car repair. Well, of course, it was re-bodied in what they called ‘Breadvan’ style by Drogo in Italy. I think I paid £1,700 or thereabouts…”

I subsequently wandered back to the paddock, had a stroll around and a natter, dropped into the Lounge building – set-dressed as a British public-school staff room in effect – to warm up, then up into the comms tower to follow some racing – and slick-tyred Formula 5000s in falling snow. A brave sight.

That evening to the party on the airfield edge, extraordinary son et lumiere gone high-tech with literally glitterati dancers on Segways, driving drums, an ear-splitting rock set rendering a big-top tent a near no-go for us old farts, and two chain-mail suited nut cases larking about dancing with 700,000 volts or some such sparking lightning from various parts of their anatomies. I think only one person in the pressing audience seemed unimpressed. I heard him remark in a bluff Yorkshire accent “I bet yon lad will find this has really knackered his mobile” – zing-zing, crackle, buzz (maybe a faint yelp?) from the stage…

Then quite one of the best Goodwood fireworks displays we have ever seen (and there have been quite a few) preceded a stroll back through the paddock, the relentless easterly wind driving snow in under the shelters onto some of the cars. Back to hotel and a few hours’ kip. Up and off in deeper snow, find the Saturday car parks closed, and we are directed instead into what pre-war had been Freddie March, the 9th Duke’s, flying field. This was where his thatched aircraft hangar had once stood. Now my snow-covered Land Rover was parked near that spot. Breakfast in the Great Hall aka modern-era aircraft hangar – so unbelievably divorced with all its theatrical or film-set dressing from its everyday normality, just jam-packed with light aircraft. Then back to Bonhams, back to the comms tower, back to the paddock – ooh-aah, super-impressed by all-around driving standards and some exceptionally fine racing out there. Let’s hear it for Rob Huff, Oliver Hart, Lukas Halusa, Tim Llewellyn and more, and more. 

And here I append a selection of happy snaps taken over the weekend on my beloved Canon G16. As I said in the beginning, that really was different – wasn’t it? Tell you what, the size of the hardy crowd made one proud to be British.

Photography courtesy of The GP Library