Video: Festival of Speed Day 1 Full Highlights

The Pagani Utopia is a solid way to get the ball rolling. When a man like Horacio Pagani builds his idea of utopian motoring, the world takes notice. It’s safe to say the crowds lining Goodwood Hill did the same as this AMG-powered masterpiece powered its way to the finishing line.

Topping such a machine sounds impossible, but then you might not reckon on a return of a Goodwood favourite, the Leyat Helica, ‘the plane without wings’, which batters the air with a front-mounted propellor. Something tells us NCAP might have something to say about that…

MG’s opening parade gave crowds their first chance to see the new Cyberster – MG’s electric sports car – and was closely followed by runs up the hill from cars like the Pagani, YangWang U9 electric supercar, Maserati MC20, Aston Martin Valiant and McLaren Senna, before a Lancia Delta S4 escaped the Forest Rally Stage for some activities on Tarmac.

The Bugatti Mistral and McMurtry Spéirling fan car gave us two distinct flavours of outrageous performance, the Mistral serving up a 16-cylinder assault on the sense, with the McMurty contrasting with near-silent passes like a giant lightsaber swooping past the crowds, highlighted by a ducktail of dust thrown up by the car’s downforce-creating fan.

With all this going on, it says something that a Nissan Silvia silenced the crowds with its driver, Kevin Quinn, carving his car from one inch-perfect drift to the next. A Toyota Stout served up even more drifting antics, the classic truck proving adept at tail slides as it performed a series of doughnuts in front of Goodwood House.

Over at the Future Lab, guests got a chance to see what the car industry has in store for us in the coming decades, from the latest in robotics to solar-powered cars, autonomous cars and – yes, of course – flying cars.

We combined motoring celebrities with actual celebrities when singer Sam Ryder took to the hill in a McLaren. At the same time, a WRC Hyundai i20 demonstrated the devastating point-to-point performance of a modern rally car.

Naturally, motorsport royalty also took to the hill in the form of a supercharged W125 Mercedes-Benz. At the same time, a Shadow-Chevrolet Mk1 prototype demonstrated its incredible air brakes. Alex Albon showed us, up close and personal, exactly why he’s in F1 as he took some of the classics from the Williams team’s back catalogue for a run up the Goodwood Hill.

As ever with Goodwood, while runs up the hill provide the centre point of what’s happening, they barely scratch the event's surface. Up at the Forest Rally Stage, some of the most precious gems of the rally world slipped and slid to the finishing line. Meanwhile, The Cartier Lawn celebrated some of the greatest in motoring, from the iconic Pagani Zonda to famed Lamborghini designer Marcello Gandini, covering a career that stretched from the Miura to the Diablo.

As you can probably tell, the opening day served up plenty for car fans to get their teeth into, and the action will only ramp up as we spear headlong into the weekend. Stay tuned to GRR and our YouTube channel to hear about – or, indeed, see – all the action.

The 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed is underway, and you can watch every moment of the action on our live stream right here on GRR!