3 replies to this topic

[LotusElise]

I've tried searching on here, but I can't find any details of the one bike meeting originally held at Goodwood. Can anyone post a link please?

Google just gives me stuff from the Revival, and I'm looking for the in-period one.

 

Any help gratefully received.

Edited by LotusElise, 13 November 2014 - 12:15.

[Vitesse2]

The meeting was on April 14th 1951. Nine races: Geoff Duke won the 500cc feature on a Norton.

 

 

Goodwood not tough enough for bikers

I've always had a soft spot for racing motorcyclists. To me they have always seemed more prepared to as John Cobb once put it "lean that much further out of the window", at risk of falling out, than the common run of their four-wheeled brethren. Perhaps there's a hint of this in the reaction expressed after motorcycling's one and only dedicated race meeting at Goodwood, in 1951. At day's end it was suggested to Freddie Richmond that the main disadvantage of motorcycle racing on his new perimeter-track course was that without the camber of a normal road the riders had "...an unrealistically wide choice of cornering line".

 

While Goodwood's fast sweeping bends were judged a fine nursery "for proper road racing", the racers expressed regret that none of the corners was truly blind, and suggested erecting walls on the infield verges "in the interests of rider development".

 

The fear was that riders brought up on such an easily sighted course could become dead men walking the moment they aspired to such true road circuits as the Isle of Man, Dundrod, Cookstown, the Bremgaiten, Albi, Chimay, and so many more. But Goodwood became cars-only until the 1998 Revival.

http://www.motorspor...h-enough-bikers

[LotusElise]

Thankyou, Vitesse2.

 

I'm doing a special writing project on the history of Goodwood, and this is really helpful.

[timbo]

Not really an answer to the question, but today's era of motorcycle racers would love a circuit like Goodwood, given its sweeping bends.
Brought up on a diet of stop/start corners and hairpins to slow car racers down and perhaps even create an overtaking opportunity, an open circuit of flowing corners must seem like heaven.