Doug Nye – Social climbing

It’s rather like the famous piece of wisdom often attributed to South African golfer Gary Player, but actually – like so many penetrating observations upon life in general - derived by him from very much earlier quotes.  Player’s version in a 2002 interview for ‘Golf Digest’ magazine describes how: “I was practicing in a bunker down in Texas and this good old boy with a big hat stopped to watch. The first shot he saw me hit, went in the hole. He said, ‘You got 50 bucks if you knock the next one in’. I holed the next one. Then he says, ‘You got $100 if you hole the next one’. In it went for three in a row. As he peeled off the bills he said, ‘Boy, I’ve never seen anyone so lucky in my life’. And I shot back, ‘Well, the harder I practice, the luckier I get’.”

Like Ms Trott I sometimes get frustrated about the things some people say. It’s like the perfectly balanced, chip-on-both shoulders, attitude of some to our Goodwood Revival Meeting. “All that dressing up and clowning around – it’s just a bunfight for toffs and hooray Henries…” Ahem – yes, well, anyone who knows Goodwood well is fully aware that such an attitude tells rather more about the person who declares it, than it ever does about the events themselves. The Revival Meeting’s most popular features were conceived with good intent, and have been applied since 1998 with the very best of good intent.

But the alleged correlation perceived in some circles between motor racing at Goodwood and what the Italians delightfully (and bluntly) describe as ‘snobismo’ actually dates way back into the past. In fact it dates back before the Goodwood Motor Circuit was even a twinkle in Freddie March’s eye.

The motoring body behind organising Goodwood races since their inception in 1948 is of course the British Automobile Racing Club (BARC). The modern organisation was created post-World War 2 by amalgamation of two pre-war bodies - the Brooklands Automobile Racing Club (the pre-war BARC) and the Junior Car Club (JCC).

Of the two, the pre-war BARC represented experience, dependability, absolutely the establishment core of British motor sporting administration, dominated by the snap-brim hatted, initially spats-wearing, upper-middle to aristocratic classes – with the practical duties of day-to-day operation devolving upon one or two bowler-hatted (and deeply trusted) dependable functionaries.  If motor racing organisation during the 1920s and ’30s had been a British war movie then those at the top would have been the cut-glass accented officers, the blokes who actually did the frontline work the Cockney or broad-rural, maybe Yorkshire/Lancashire, NCOs… jolly good chaps in a tight corner…

The pre-war BARC’s upstart offshoot which amalgamated with the original body to form the postwar BARC was the Junior Car Club, which was a real enthusiast body – rather more glued together by a shared passion for deploying the motor car in sport. The JCC was incredibly innovative and inventive, and Freddie March himself was one of its greatest glitterati, while also developing close relationships within the more-establishment pre-war BARC.

So it was that as President of the postwar remains of both organisations – left effectively high and dry by the war-enforced closure of Brooklands to motor racing – Freddie March picked up wartime flyer Tony Gaze’s recommendation that he open up the perimeter track of his own Estate’s Westhampnett aerodrome as a much needed new motor racing venue… and our Goodwood Motor Circuit was born.

But for the disaffected few, motor racing was always an activity denied to the many by the moneyed few. In Great Britain this meant - for many – denial by social class… The Brooklands slogan “The Right Crowd and No Crowding” did absolutely nothing to help.

As a (just) postwar child I have absolutely no way of knowing for sure, but from what I have been told over many, many years now by Brooklands habitués – from literally all social backgrounds – that slogan can in fact be easily misread.

Brooklands at its best recognised only one social class. And that was The Enthusiast Class. “The Right Crowd” constituted the true enthusiast, the car nut, the confirmed biker, the questing engineer, the competitive tuner and committed mechanic. That’s why when north-easterner Freddie Dixon - struggling underneath his recalcitrant Riley - heard a crystal-glass accent saying “What-ho, Dixon, spot of bother then?”, to which he bawled “B—— off!”, he was then inclined to take a second look to identify his questioner.

Upon recognising Frances, Earl Howe – the much respected elder statesman (even then) of British motor racing – Dixon reputedly modified his stance with a bit of proper social-class respect. “Oh, sorry - B—— off my Lord…”.  And Howe roared with laughter.

Like I said, officer class/NCO, a, much respected toff/known jolly good chap in a tight corner. Within those Brooklands gates, anyone who proved their enthusiasm, skill and capability would instantly be accepted as qualifying for ‘The Right Crowd”.

When I was a kid, and first got to know about racing at Goodwood – cars to me were simply unattainable exotica owned and run by people my lifelong gardener father called “the higher ups”. And then, racing cars – real, genuine racing cars – were barely imaginable exotica simply owned and run by the Gods…

Of course you had to be moneyed to go motor racing – but while a considerable proportion of Brooklands racers had been far from aristocratic, or hugely wealthy, they had all found ways – wangled ways - of affording to do so. Motor traders, greasy-fingered former mechanics and engineers, they had each – in effect – just got luckier and luckier the harder they practiced…

Through the 1950s Goodwood motor racing was characterised, most markedly in the BARC Members’ Meetings, by myriad individual races for sports cars - both production road-going pretend sports cars and more specialised roadworthy sports-racing cars, really tailor-made just to compete.  The occasional production touring car event did get a look in, but it was very, very rare.

And that reflected the infant postwar BARC’s inherited rather sniffy attitude - snobbyness - to what was ‘proper’ motor racing.  ‘Proper’ motor racing involved sports car competition, aspiring towards ‘proper’ single-seater open-wheeled racing, for the Grand Prix category, Formula 1, Formula 2, and Formule Libre. At a pinch, with a push and a squeeze, they would run a race for 500cc Formula 3 cars – but these unlovely devices were undeniably clattery, juddery, smoky, smelly and (worse) very much redolent of rather scruffy lower-class racing away to the north-east there at Brands Hatch (‘Brown Patch’).

And if the attitude was a little bit sniffy towards 500cc racing – though Goodwood did host it – it was for many years very sniffy indeed towards saloon car racing (an attitude I still share – though for very different reasons).

Saloon car racing was regarded as a circus act promoted by the BRDC at Silverstone – not proper racing at all – tin tops, four seats, often four doors (!) – oh my dear, that’s not proper racing. It was plainly music hall-standard entertainment, and that would never do.

It wasn’t until the very late 1950s into the 1960s that Goodwood began to host serious saloon car racing, and for some of the postwar BARC establishment even that seemed somewhat infra dig…below their dignity.

What perhaps saved it – elevating the tin tops as the racing they provided in fact deserved – was the enthusiastic presence in saloon cars (Minis in these cases) of such drivers as Sir John Whitmore and especially Goodwood pin-up girl Cristabel Carlisle. Both drove spectacularly well and they represented absolutely the postwar, more liberal interpretation of “The Right Crowd’, by any standards…

And then the other game-changing characteristic at Goodwood became the enthusiastic adoption of Formula Junior as a core ingredient on the menu, greatly expanding the career-path appeal of Members’ Meetings to the new breed of aspiring would-be professional racing drivers. It was against this background, in 1960, that Goodwood provided a Formula Junior launch pad for such incipient greats as Jim Clark and John Surtees. From Formula Junior we got into Formula 3 with the 1-litre ‘screamers’ and amateur/professional racing demarcation became ever more indistinct. Motor sport was changing towards the mid-1960s – and changing fast…

As will always be the case, the sporting scene evolved in concert with the social scene of the relevant period. With the Revival Meetings we have always encouraged spectators and supporters to come along and enjoy what is effectively our movie set for the weekend. And if interested they are encouraged to choose their favoured period and dress and participate as ‘extras’ – and above all to relish and enjoy the period motor sporting fare and ambience on offer.

As Derek Bell so memorably put it, at the prize-giving for the inaugural Revival Meeting back in ’98: “You don’t want to go out of those gates over there, because that’s the real world. It’s a very much nicer world in here…”

And that is precisely what Goodwood Motorsport try to make it, with every successive year.  Hopefully, the more we practice, the luckier we get…

Photography courtesy of The GP Library