Doug Nye: The origins of the Members' Meeting

Of course, most Goodwood supporters and aficionados are familiar with the inaugural meeting, organised by Freddie Richmond, the 9th Duke of Richmond & Gordon, at his aerodrome venue in September 1948. 

Perhaps less commonly recalled are the early meetings which then followed, into 1949. Once the original experimental 1948 race meeting had been voted a great success, three similar open meetings – open to any interested competitor wishing to enter – were initially announced for 1949. The go-ahead Junior Car Club had meanwhile absorbed the rump of the pre-war Brooklands Automobile Racing Club. The combined body had then been restyled as the British Automobile Racing Club – BARC – as still thriving – and running our core Goodwood meetings in association with Goodwood Motorsport today.

In preparation for that first ‘full’ season of racing at Goodwood in 1949, the old Duke had grandstands erected near the start and finish line, and at Woodcote Corner. Spectator closures were fenced off along the straight, and at Madgwick and St Mary’s corners. For the initial Easter Monday meeting – which launched that series on April 18, 1949 – much fuss was made about Goodwood races having been extended to ten whole laps for the feature events, and five laps for the supporting races. Easter Monday Goodwood was to witness the first fixtures of the year’s European calendar, and so a number of new cars were expected to appear. 

Race winners that Monday included Reg Parnell (three times) in his Maserati 4CLT/48, leading home the 10-lap Richmond Trophy Formula 1 field (together with the 5-lap Chichester Cup for supercharged cars over 1450cc, and a 5-lap handicap), Dudley Folland’s startling and exotic V12-engined Ferrari 166, Stan Coldham’s 500cc Cooper-JAP, Frank Kennington’s Cisitalia D45 monoposto, and – in a second Easter Handicap 5-lapper, Stirling Moss in his Cooper-JAP ‘1000’.

However, all was not quite hunky-dory in the public behaviour stakes – much to the dismay of the organising Club, and very much of the Duke, Freddie March, himself. 

Standing eight or ten deep in the level spectator enclosures provided those paying public in the rearmost rows with a really poor view of the action. Consequently, some enquiring minds showed their initiative, and gravitated to many of the mouldering wartime aerodrome buildings crowded along the straight from Woodcote and Madgwick, and clustered again out at St Mary’s. Realising that a bit of elevation would hugely improve their view – they began to climb.

Soon there were so very many people standing on the rotting felt-and-bitumen roofs and perched upon the curved corrugated-iron of numerous old Nissen huts that the over-stressed structures of quite a few began to sag, creak – and in or two cases to collapse. Once begged to return to relative safety at ground level, some of the more determined – and by this time increasingly cheesed-off – spectators then climbed over the paling fences, and encroached upon the trackside for a better view.

Of course, this was completely unacceptable on even 1949-standard health and safety grounds, and the Duke and the BARC had to suspend racing for a while until some better semblance of order had been restored.

A post-event ‘de-brief’ concluded that larger spectator enclosures, both better fenced and better marshalled – would plainly be necessary before another big meeting could be confidently contemplated. The planned Whitsun meeting was therefore cancelled, modifications were initiated on the Motor Circuit itself, and the second fixture of the year was then the 1st BARC Members’ Meeting, which was run on August 13^th, 1949…

The original Members’ Meeting ethic was entirely for entries to be closed-to-club – open to club members only – and in initial form every one of the nine races run was open to sportscars only, because in those days ‘sportscars’ were literally cars in which one could take part in ‘sporting events’ – to which, of course, one drove one’s car on the road – and hopefully, if it survived the racing experience – one then drove it back home again, for the lucky few in triumph. 

Here was a new-fangled form of what was to become British club racing at its most basic level. In America, it would be described as “run what you brung”. It was relatively informal, the meeting was all clubmen and clubwomen together, and it was Fun. 

Every one of its nine races was a handicap event, the first three of three laps only, the balance of five laps distance. Reflecting the fact that a sizeable proportion of the entry would have had zero previous racing experience, a white line was painted in the centre of the track from Woodcote Corner to the finish line, with novices being exhorted to keep to the right of it. This was because the track curved through a relatively blind left-hander where the chicane would subsequently be introduced, and the new rule had been designed to leave the inside ‘fast line’ there free for the experienced hard chargers to blast through, unhindered by wandering cannon-fodder…

Len Gibbs won the opening race, narrowly, in his rapid pre-war Riley Nine. City gent Eric Thompson excelled in the second handicap – winning in his Lightweight HRG. John Craig’s Jaguar SS100 prevailed in the last of these brief three-lappers, before Connaught constructor Rodney Clarke promoted the new brand well by winning the opening 5-lapper in his Connaught L2.

Dickie Metcalfe’s Fiat Ballila was the unlikely winner of race 5 on the programme, followed in the next event by MG specialist Dick Jacobs in his MG TA Special. Eric Thompson reappeared in the HRG to overcome his handicap after just four of the five laps, and so notch his second race win of the meeting.

In effect, the wheels then came off the organisation in the day’s penultimate race 8, as it actually lasted six laps instead of the scheduled five before the chequered flag was waved at Guy Jason-Henry who had been scorching round in Rob Walker’s handsome and powerful Delahaye 135M with its electric-change Cotal gearbox. That futuristic system featured a big lever enabling the driver to select either ‘forward’ mode or ‘reverse’, which Tickled Rob no end because he had four speeds available in reverse as well as forward. Early in his pre-war ownership of the car he had attempted to reach 100mph in reverse within minutes of having done so in forward. He hadn’t gone far in reverse before the front wheels’ steering geometry reversed, plucking the steering wheel out of Rob’s grasp and diverting the car straight into a roadside ditch, in which it overturned.

Postwar at Goodwood’s MM1 meeting, Guy Jason-Henry was so quick in the repaired Delahaye that he had lapped the scratch man only the third time round, but long-term his success wouldn’t do him much good. Famously, Jason-Henry subsequently thought it would be a good idea to bring Rob’s Delahaye back from a Continental trip with its curvaceous box-section mudguards jam-packed with smuggled watches. Possibly acting on a tip-off, His Majesty’s Customs promptly felt his collar upon landing, and he was eventually sentenced to a brief holiday “developing a striped suntan” behind bars, while poor Rob – an innocent bystander in all this – had his much-loved 1939 Le Mans car confiscated, and had to buy it back from the authorities…

The final race winner of MM1 was then burly, bespectacled Sydney Allard, whose big 4.4-litre Allard Special rumbled round his five laps of event 9 to bring the curtain down on “an enjoyable day’s club racing” – the first of so many…

Photography courtesy of The GP Library and the Revs Digital Library