Festival of Speed 2017: an introduction from Lord March

This is our 25th Festival of Speed and I'm looking forward to it as much as ever... the planning, creating new surprises, then seeing the cars and bikes driven and ridden by all those great names… it is fantastic.

Our Festival theme for 2017 is 'Peaks of Performance - Motorsport's Game Changers'. To illustrate the theme, we have filled the paddocks with cars and bikes that were so much faster, and more sophisticated, than their rivals that in many cases the rules were changed to restore competition.

As ever we are celebrating lots of important anniversaries, providing us with a platform on which to create a Festival that reflects the absolute greatest cars, bikes, drivers and riders. Then, added to this core of the event, we will have a fantastic gathering of supercars, F1 teams, the amazing Goodwood Action Sports (GAS) bike riders, the very latest road cars and those sensational Group B cars out on the Forest Rally Stage.

Forza Ferrari! We celebrate the 70th birthday of the Prancing Horse with no less than 70 of the red cars from Maranello. In the paddocks you will find their most successful Grand Prix cars, sports cars and their new supercars.

We also mark 40 years of the Williams team in Formula One, the only private team to remain in the F1 pit lane. We'll also look back to the pre-war years with those incredible Silver Arrows, and to the 1980s with those mighty turbocharged F1 cars.

We pay tribute to the great John Surtees, a Patron of the Festival from the first event in 1993, who sadly died earlier this year. John won his first ever car race at Goodwood and competed at both the Revival and the Festival. A truly extraordinary sportsman.

So, I hope you, the fans, are as excited as I am. It seems unbelievable that this is our 25th Festival, the years have flown by, but to see and hear such wonderful machinery in Goodwood Park is still a big thrill. Nowhere else in the world will you see such great cars and bikes all gathered together in one place at one time.

I look forward to seeing you all here - and I hope you have a great time.

March

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