A NEWSLETTER FROM Pryority Travel

As you read this, a Porsche 917 is idling at the bottom of a driveway in West Sussex. The driveway is 1.16 miles long, lined with hay bales and a flint wall, and it runs past the front lawn of a house that has been in the same family since 1697. In a moment, that 917 will launch up it at full song, and a quarter of a million people will lean in to listen.

 

This is the Goodwood Festival of Speed, running right now through Sunday. A few of you have already asked me about it, which tells me it's time to put this one on paper.

Goodwood is what happens when the Duke of Richmond decides the family estate needs more horsepower. Since 1993 he has invited the motorsport world to his backyard every July: F1 champions, Le Mans winners, rally legends, and the cars that made them famous, all running up the Hill for four days.

This year's theme is “The Rivals,” and the lineup reads like the shelf of car books I had growing up. The Porsche 917 and the Ferrari 512S, back together. The Lancia 037 chasing the Audi Quattro through the forest stage. Fifty years since Hunt and Lauda went to the wire, sixty since Ford and Ferrari settled things at Le Mans.

 

But the cars are only half of it. What makes Goodwood different is where you get to stand. A Grand Prix keeps the machinery behind fences and the drivers behind glass. At Goodwood, the cars are parked on the lawn, the drivers walk the paddock, and the man who won Le Mans in the car you had a poster of will sign the poster.

Do it properly and it gets better still. Saturday afternoon there's a party in the private gardens of Goodwood House: champagne, afternoon tea, and the Hill running all day in the background. Sunday you watch the Shootout from a hospitality suite above Molecomb Corner, the tightest point on the climb, where brave and too-brave get sorted out in public. That is the version I build for clients.

Tickets for 2026 sold out months ago, and the hospitality allocations went first. So if watching this weekend's coverage puts Goodwood on your 2027 list, the planning window is not next spring. It's now.

 

I put together the Pryority Guide to the Goodwood Festival of Speed: which days actually matter, what to wear, how to skip the traffic entirely, and the four-day itinerary I'd build for you. The button below will take you there.

P.S. The official dress code is “smart casual,” which in England is a genre unto itself. The guide covers it, down to the shoes.

A FEW DETOURS WORTH TAKING

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