The 2025 Goodwood Festival of Speed is celebrating 75 years of the Formula 1 world championship, including title-winners, underdog heroes and many other great and innovative cars. Here’s a selection of the highlights.
Champions
Williams are on course for one of their best championship finishes in years. They scored their first title success in 1980 with the FW07B, designed by Patrick Head and raced to the championship by Alan Jones.
After several years in the doldrums, Ferrari enjoyed a resurgence in the mid-seventies and Niki Lauda won the 1975 title in this 312T.
After near-misses in the previous two seasons, Alain Prost finally won his first world championship in McLaren’s MP4/2B.
Possibly the most technologically advanced Formula 1 car of all time. The Williams-Renault FW15C featured many technologies which were banned once the season ended including active suspension and anti-lock braking.
Formula 1 is heading into a new era of technical regulations next year. Many are wondering if Mercedes will perform as well as they did following F1’s last major rules change, when Lewis Hamilton won his second world title, and the team took their first of eight consecutive constructors’ championship titles.
Classics
Ligier made a superb start to the 1979 season, winning the opening races. However they faded at mid-season and Jody Scheckter won the title for Ferrari.
Nigel Mansell joined Ferrari in 1989 as the team was developing a new car as F1 replaced turbocharged engines with naturally aspirated units. The 639 was their test machine which the team used to worked on its new semi-automatic gearbox. Mansell won his first race of the season in their definitive 1989 car, the 640.
The Benetton B192 was a neat and effective design which Michael Schumacher took to his first grand prix victory at Spa-Francorchamps in 1992.
The Tyrrell P34 is a car which needs no introduction: The only six-wheeled F1 car to win a grand prix. Rivals briefly imitated its design but without the same success.
The Lotus 88B was an innovation too far for Colin Chapman. His lateral-thinking attempt to get around F1’s chassis regulations was ruled illegal.
Current
Haas are making their debut at the festival this weekend. Along with drivers Oliver Bearman and Esteban Ocon, team principal Ayao Komatsu and owner Gene Haas will take to the hillclimb in their machinery.
Underdogs
Sir Stirling Moss scored one of Formula 1’s great ‘underdog’ victories at Monaco in 1961 in the Lotus 18, resisting the Ferrari pair breathing down his neck.
Lotus founder Colin Chapman produced many radical machines, some of which were extremely successful. The 56B, powered by a turbine engine, was innovative but did not prove a step forward for racing car design.
Tyrrell’s championship-winning days were behind them by the early eighties, but Michele Alboreto scored its two last wins at Las Vegas in 1982 in this car, and another in Detroit the following year.
Arrows set the record for starting the most races without ever winning one, though they enjoyed an uplift in performance after acquiring BMW turbo engines in the mid-eighties.
Eurobrun, which raced in F1 between 1988 and 1990, were undoubtedly underdogs. They never scored a point, peaking with 11th place for Stefano Modena in the 1988 Hungarian Grand Prix in this ER-188.
Gordon Murray collection
The festival is paying tribute to Formula 1 design ace Gordon Murray this weekend. His cars won world championships with Brabham in 1981 and 1983, after which he brought his influential design style to McLaren, where Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost won world titles in cars he worked on.
Murray is also remembered for one of F1’s most radical creations. He added a fan to the rear of the team’s BT46 which was used to generate downforce at high speed, effectively sucking it to the ground. Niki Lauda dominated the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix in the car, following which the design was effectively banned. Murray has since used the fan concept on his road cars.
More images will be added here.
Formula 1
- Alpine is now F1’s highest scoring last-placed team of all time: British GP stats
- Horner says he leaves Red Bull “with a heavy heart” in first statement since shock exit
- Does Horner’s exit give Verstappen a reason to stay at Red Bull – or prove he’ll go?
- Red Bull fires Horner after 20 years as team principal – Mekies takes his place
- Ferrari had no GPS data from Hamilton’s car throughout British Grand Prix