Top-name racers all set to do battle at #76MM
The forthcoming 76th Members’ Meeting, taking place at the Motor Circuit on the weekend of 17-18 March, will feature numerous world-class drivers in a heady cocktail of races and demonstrations that will kickstart the 2018 historic racing season.
We revealed earlier this week that 13-time Grand Prix winner and 2001 Formula 1 World Championship runner-up David Coulthard will top the bill when he makes his Members’ Meeting racing debut. The 46-year-old Scot will contest the Salvadori Cup in a Mercedes 300SL run by the new IWC Racing Team for only his second race appearance at Goodwood.
Regular Members’ Meeting visitors will recognise the names and faces of our House Captains. Once again, sportscar ace Nicolas Minassian (Aubigny), Grand Prix and Le Mans winner Jochen Mass (Darnley), touring-car veteran Anthony Reid (Methuen) and F1 racer and five-time Le Mans winner Emanuele Pirro (Torbolton) will lead their teams into battle in the all-important fight for points accrued by race results and off-track activities tackled by members and spectators. With Methuen leading Torbolton 3-1 after the four Members’ Meetings held since 2014, Aubigny and Darnley will be out to get on the winners’ list for the first time.
It’s the hugely popular Gerry Marshall Trophy two-part production saloon race that has once again attracted the biggest number of pro racers – past and present. British Touring Car Champions Tim Harvey, Andrew Jordan, Matt Neal and Jason Plato will go up against World Touring Car title winners Andy Priaulx and Rob Huff as well as tin-top veterans Mat Jackson, Mike Jordan, Tiff Needell, Reid, Steve Soper and Patrick Watts in period-liveried machinery from the 1970s and early ’80s.
BBC Top Gear presenter, journalist and regular historic racer Chris Harris will also take part, sharing the Patrick Racing Rover SD1 with former Gerry Marshall Trophy winner Chris Ward. Look out for Andrew Jordan and Soper in the Sears Trophy for 1960s saloons, too; they’ll be going head to head in very well-sorted Ford Lotus Cortinas.
Another popular figure in the Goodwood paddock is Stuart Graham. The 76-year-old, who won Tourist Trophies on two wheels on the Isle of Man and on four wheels at Silverstone, will get back behind the wheel of the Brut-liveried Chevrolet Camaro in which he finished second in the 1974 British Saloon Car Championship. Sportscar aces Darren Turner and Marino Franchitti will also tackle the race in a BMW 530i and a Triumph Dolomite Sprint respectively. Franchitti will also return to action in father-in-law Nick Mason’s Maserati Tipo 61 ‘Birdcage’ for the Salvadori Cup.
Finally, US NASCAR hero Mike Skinner, who has regularly stunned Festival of Speed fans with indecent times on the Hillclimb course in V8 stockcar weaponry, will make his Goodwood racing debut at the wheel of a Rover SD1. He should be right at home in the big V8 machine, although we perhaps ought to remind him that most of the Motor Circuit’s corners are right-handers…
Tickets to the 76th Members' Meeting are now limited, so act fast!
76MM
2018
