Jenson is always a favourite with the home crowd, and I was lucky that a delay on the hill climb stranded the 2009 World Champion at the top of the course, for long enough for me to shoot this series of portraits. 

It’s been a while since the last In The Frame post, so I thought I’d show a few shots from this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed of Swedish superman Kenny Bräck, whose special powers include surviving an incredible 214g impact and manhandling an original GT40 around a wet Goodwood, rally-style. After retiring from a successful career in Indycar (including a World Championship and Indy 500 win), Kenny still gets his horsepower fix driving rally cars (winning the 2009 X-games outright), classic cars (multiple winner at the Goodwood Revival) and - putting the two together - classic rally cars (taking a couple of wins in a mkII Escort). Top guy.

One of the megastars of this year’s Festival of Speed was gymkhana-master Ken Block. Ken brought the one-off ‘Hoonicorn’ Mustang to the hill, and although it was his first time at Goodwood he didn’t hold back, dispersing rubber all the way up the run. He seemed to be on a special mission to kill the tyres at the top staging area, which is where I caught up with him. Awesome car, and genuinely cool guy!

The rally stage is a pretty punishing place - for the cars but also for photographers! The track is cut into chalk stone, which makes it very dusty, after each time I left the stage I looked like I’d been floured. It is also very rutty in places, and several of the 80 or so cars that entered picked up damage, some of it fixable but for some it was terminal. That didn’t stop most drivers from pushing though, and giving the spectators a good show - especially over the jump!

There’s so much going on at the FoS, it’s easy to sometimes overlook the details. It’s worth paying attention though, when you get little treats like these!

Goodwood’s Festival of Speed never fails to impress with it’s selection of important and interesting machines, and you can guarantee there will be some oddballs thrown in there to make even the most hardcore petrolista scratch their heads trying to work out what it is. That was the definitely the case for me with this awesome Renault Quarante Chevaux. With lines straight out of a steampunk comic, it didn’t even need the rich ‘Bleu de France’ paintwork (and leather!) to stand out. Definitely one of the highlights!

After he drifted the entire hill climb course, I managed to catch ‘Mad’ Mike Whiddett doing some donuts at the top. The marshals looked on slightly disapprovingly, but he seemed to win them over by the time the smoke cleared, as seen in the pic above. I heard he was using a fresh set of rubber for each run, you can see how much got vapourised on the 1.2 mile course by the meager depth of tread left at the end…

A week on, it still feels strange that I was rubbing shoulders with some of motorsport’s biggest names at the FoS. While I’m still in bragging mode, here’s some gratuitous name-dropping; Jackie Stewart, Stirling Moss, Sébastien Loeb, Jenson Button, Emmerson Fittipaldi, Sébastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson, Jann Mardenborough, Brian Redman, Stuart Hall, Pedro de la Rosa, Johnny Herbert et al…..

Sébastien Loeb was definitely one of the most anticipated drivers at the Festival. Not only is he the most successful rally pilot in history (nine consecutive World Rally Championships don’t lie!) but he brought something extra special with him - his record setting Pikes Peak hill-climb car. His time-attack on the hill was one of, if not the headline spectacle of the weekend, and although he didn’t crack the overall record (set in an F1 car before they were banned from the timed competition) he did take the honours of the fastest time for 2014.

I was very fortunate to be asked by Goodwood to shoot the legendary Festival of Speed last weekend, one of the UK’s biggest car events (rivaled only by the British Grand Prix). I’d been many times in the past, but not since 2009 and never with a press pass, so it was a hugely exciting proposition. The event is represented by virtually every form of automotive competition, from F1 to Nascar to rally, right back to the birth of motoring.

Although I spent most of my time there covering the rally stage and one of the stars of the event, Sébastien Loeb, I had some free time on the hill and in the paddocks too. Since my last visit 5 years ago, the event has got even bigger and better, so much so that you’d need a whole weekend to see everything. And I’ll need more than this post - so stay tuned for more FoS content coming up over the next few days…;)