Gatecrashing Goodwood’s MotoGP party

Goodwood is a unique event, so things happen that don’t happen anywhere else, like overtaking Ayrton Senna’s 1993 McLaren MP4/8 F1 car as I make my way down to the collecting area, where everyone awaits their runs up the narrow and winding mile-long hill.

While you’re there, your bike parked against the straw bales that line the road, more bikes and F1 cars rumble past down the hill, just inches away, popping, banging and making the ground shake as they join the queue behind you.

The noise is insane: a mad mix of old and new F1 cars – Lewis Hamilton’s 2021 Mercedes, a 2017 Ferrari, Senna’s McLaren and Nigel Mansell’s 1992 Williams-Renault to name but a few – plus recent and current MotoGP bikes and old 500s, both two-stroke and four-stroke – so you can’t help but giggle madly, while simultaneously coughing, your lungs assailed by the finest hydrocarbons available to humanity.

Best of all is that for once the riders can’t get away from me, so I move in for the kill…

Espargaró is my first victim. He’s riding a MotoGP bike for the first time since his huge crash at the season-opening Portuguese GP back in March and he’s never been to Goodwood. Like all first-timers he’s gobsmacked by the size of the event and the crazy mix of new and old two- and four-wheel race machines.

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This doesn’t happen anywhere else: Bagnaia, Bastianini and Schwantz await their runs, while four-times F1 champ Sebastian Vettel rumbles past in a Williams Renault
Oxley

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“It’s super-nice,” he grins, eyes wide open. “You’re riding down to the start line riding with Formula 1 cars – I’ve never done anything like that before, so it feels a bit crazy. The people back home in Spain don’t know how big this event is, but I think we need more MotoGP bikes here in the future.

And then the run up the hill, two in the rain on Friday and one in the sun on Sunday.

I’ve got Gerry and Andrew Smith of Smith Brothers Racing looking after the RGV and giving me push-starts, which would be easy, except for the dozens of bikes, mechanics, F1 cars, marshals, photographers and camera crews milling about. Beautiful chaos – my favourite kind.

The soaking track is rainbow-coloured from all the oil dropped by classic racing cars

Riders are waved up the hill at ten second intervals, a bit like the Isle of Man TT, except the course is 36.75 miles shorter and there’s no prize money at the end.

On Friday the rain is lashing down, so the asphalt looks super-slippery and it is. Savadori and the Aprilia go before me. The Italian does a MotoGP-style start: engage launch control, full revs, dump the clutch and let the electronics work their wonders. Except they don’t. The Aprilia spins its rear tyre, the bike kicks sideways, Savadori regains control, shakes his head in bemusement and off he goes.

Thanks for that warning. The RGV doesn’t really run below 7000rpm, so it’s lots of revs and lots of clutch slip and off I go.

I scare myself a couple of times going up the hill but that’s nothing to the run back down.

The RGV is thirty years old and its carbon front brake discs basically don’t work in the cold and wet, plus the soaking track is rainbow-coloured from all the oil dropped by classic racing cars. And you do need to scrub off speed for a few corners.

So I’m trying to keep the engine from dying by blipping the throttle, while gently caressing the front brake lever, trying to get a little heat into the carbon discs, so they give a modicum of stopping power, while at the same time trying not to pull the lever too hard, which might get the discs towards their operating temperature, which might lock the front tyre and put me on the ground.

Yes, the RGV does have a rear brake, but that’s not up to much either, and, of course, two-strokes provide pretty much zero engine braking.

I know I’m not going to die if I crash while cruising down the hill, but I might get killed for trashing a priceless artefact. This is like walking a tightrope while juggling with the Crown Jewels – I’ve never been so scared while going so slow.

We do another run in the rain in the afternoon. Coming towards to the start line I gas up the RGV, trying to clear the engine and prevent the spark plugs from oiling up. All of a sudden there’s Pirro doing a three-point turn in front of me. I go for the brakes. Nothing much happens. Pirro is moving backwards, closing the gap which I’m aiming for, between his GP23’s rear end and the straw bales. Oh shit. And then he moves forward. Phew.

The second run is better, because at least I know I’ve learned from the first run. I line up behind Schwantz, aiming to hunt him down. Ha, full Walter-Mitty mode.

At the top of the hill there’s another 15-minute wait, while the F1 cars come up, before we make our way back down. In for the kill again.

“The things we do for fun!” laughs Schwantz, who also had a moment or two. “I tried opening it up once and it just went sideways.”

Stoner gets interviewed by Goodwood’s live TV crew, standing next to his GP08, which is entirely innocent of downforce aerodynamics.

“Looks like your bike needs some wings,” I say to the 2007 and 2011 MotoGP king, fully aware of his attitude towards MotoGP’s current tech direction

“If anyone brings a wing near my bike…” he replies, mimicking the act of snapping off any wings that dare contaminate his machine.

“Put the control back in the riders’ hands!”

Dorna later arrange a media debrief with Stoner, which, in view of the above, probably isn’t the wisest idea.

The 37-year-old Australian spends 20 minutes telling a gaggle of journos what he thinks is wrong about MotoGP. Most of his opinions coincide with mine.

“Winglets, gone, ride-height devices, gone, anti-wheelie, gone, traction control cut to a safety level and nothing more,” he says. “This shit needs to go.

“I like the artistry of simple things, like short-shifting to find grip, and floating the front wheel, whether you’re using the back brake or short-shifting. Now the engineers don’t even want you to touch the clutch because it messes with their electronics, so there’s none of that sliding it in and managing the clutch and grip yourself. Put the control back in the riders’ hands!”

Stoner still regrets that he never got to race a 500cc two-stroke – he was born five years too late – but on Sunday he gets his dream of riding one – Schwantz’s 1989 RGV500.

Sunday is a glorious day: sunny but not too warm, which is good if you’re worried about overheating your engine, but bad if you try too hard to warm your carbon brakes. On the run down to the collecting area someone riding an old Desmosedici does exactly what I was trying not to do on Friday: he squeezes the front brake, locks the front and down he goes in a heap.

After this run we have an even longer wait, because one of the F1 cars that followed us has a major shunt. Whoops! There’s a few million quid gone, right there.

Bagnaia does a burnout to entertain the crowd at the top of the hill, but you can tell that the GP23’s Magneti software doesn’t appreciate such frivolity. “What the f**k are you doing? Stop it at once!”, the computer is telling him, at least that’s what it sounds like.

Motorcycle nut Vettel strolls over to chat with all the bike guys. He’s got quite a collection of classic bikes, so he strikes up conversation with Miller, owner of the nearby Sammy Miller Motorcycle Museum.

“How many bikes have you got now?” he asks.

“About 500,” Miller replies.

“Well, you started a bit before me,” laughs Vettel, who seems very cool and charming.

I discuss the electricity situation in South Africa with Brad Binder and the Honda MotoGP situation with Mick Doohan. Neither are in good shape.

“Bella casino!” I say to Bastianini, using two of the few words of Italian I know. Casino means chaos in Italian. “Si, casino! Crazy!” he laughs. But he may be in trouble when he gets back to the bottom of the hill. In parking his GP3 against the straw bales he’s snapped off one of its wings. I think about walking over to offer it to Stoner but think better of it.

On the way down I’m in a bit of a panic trying to bump start the RGV and I somehow end up riding down the hill right behind the 2017 Ferrari F1 car. It groans and growls and then yelps as the driver keeps slowing to gain some space ahead and then nails it. This is one of those moments that feels totally unreal, because where else in the world would you find yourself riding an old 500cc GP bike next to a modern F1 car?

My transport to and from Goodwood is a BMW S1000XR and it is upon this machine I have my biggest moment of the weekend. The XR is an all-rounder powered by a softer version of the S1000RR superbike engine. It makes 165 horsepower, the same as the RGV, but the power delivery couldn’t be any more different.

The bike spins to the left, comes back again, spins to the right again. And doesn’t come back

Each ride to and from Goodwood, both in the sun and the pissing rain, is a blast, because the XR is an iron fist in a silk glove.

There’s no better way of getting to Goodwood than by motorcycle. From forty or fifty miles away there’s an increasing number of supercars on the road – Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens, Astons and everything else – which I take great pleasure in zapping through the twists, where only a motorcycle can make the difference. From ten or twenty miles away there are miles and miles and miles of traffic jams, which I cruise past, feeling super-smug. If you ever visit the Festival of Speed, DON’T go by car.

After a few near misses on the RGV I have my only crash of the weekend, on the XR, while heading home on Friday. Heavy rain and thousands of cars have churned the dirt road out of the car park into a muddy quagmire. I’m desperately trying to find some grip and I just about manage, until I enter an area of thick, slimy mud. Oh dear.

The XR is wearing tyres that are basically cut slicks. I have my right hand wrapped around the throttle, so I can’t touch the front brake. I’m trying to keep control with the throttle, back brake and handlebars which, are going left, right, left, as the rear tyre scrabbles for grip.

Finally the bike spins out to the right, comes back, spins to the left, comes back again, spins to the right again. And doesn’t come back. The BMW and I land in a pool of mud. It’s my first crash in 16 years – very different from my teens, when I averaged two or three a year. A Goodwood staffer helps me pick up the XR’s 223 kilos and I struggle onwards, across more mud and soaking grass.

Meanwhile the tumble has triggered the bike’s onboard SOS system, so when I finally reach the sanctuary of an asphalt road there’s a woman from emergency services talking to me. I’m so happy to be back on asphalt that I’m accelerating through the gears while shouting at the dash, “I’m OK, I’m OK, I don’t need any help!”. Finally the woman gets the message and hangs up.

All in all, a surreal weekend.

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Thanks to Garry Taylor for the loan of his pride and joy, to Gerry and Andrew Smith for looking after me and to Jochen Van Cauwenberge of Frozenspeed and Rob Gray of Polarity Photo for their photographs