What a cast. Let’s just take a breath to recap on the stellar line-up for the Royal Automobile Club TT Celebration at the Goodwood Revival on Sunday. Bulked up by a fine roster of accumulated major race wins and titles, there’s a case to be made – not for the first time – that it’s the classiest in all motor sport.
First, there’s the overall Le Mans winners: the main man himself, record nine-time winner Tom Kristensen; all three of Audi’s magic trio André Lotterer, Marcel Fassler and Benoît Tréluyer, who scored a triple between 2011-14; two-time victor Romain Dumas; 2003 Bentley Boy Guy Smith; and 1997 Joest hero Stefan Johansson. By my (admittedly dodgy) maths, that’s a shared tally of 22 individual victories at the Circuit de la Sarthe.
Formula 1 old boys? We must namecheck that man Johansson again, plus Pedro de la Rosa, Jean-Eric Vergne and Goodwood perennial Jochen Mass. Dario Franchitti is Britain’s most decorated US IndyCar star with his three Indy 500s and four series titles. And the presence of seven-time NASCAR legend Jimmie Johnson was a wonderful added bonus. Just a shame six-time IndyCar king Scott Dixon didn’t also have a ride in the TT along with his shared drive with Dario in the Stirling Moss Memorial Trophy on Saturday.
Elsewhere in the TT, there was even a brand new world champion in Stoffel Vandoorne (yes, Formula E absolutely does count, you cynics), along with a familiar bevy of tin-top heroes: three-time World Touring Car champion Andy Priaulx, 2012 champion Rob Huff, the legend that is Steve Soper and British Touring Car Championship hat-trick heroes Matt Neal and Gordon Shedden. The last-named deserves a glow of pride this week because he trumped them all by winning the TT, sharing an AC Cobra with respected amateur Andrew Smith.
There were other Revival favourites too, of course: Marino Franchitti, Nicolas Minassian, Darren Turner, Tiff Needell. Goodwood wouldn’t be the same without them. But for my money, the biggest star of the one-hour race was the only F1 world champion on the grid. Watching Jenson Button at sublime work was both a treat and a reminder of just what an artist he remains, more than five years after the 306th and last of his F1 starts.
OK, Adrian Newey’s lightweight Jaguar E-type is infamous for its – how shall we put this? – slightly evolved deviation from period spec… But it sure provided Button with the ideal tool to display the characteristic fingertip silken style that both made him in F1 and held him back, when he was in a car that didn’t suit him. Beyond the sunny, likeable personality we see on TV, he is and always was a talent for the purists.
Had he won, by my reckoning it would have been Button’s first victory at a British race track since the last of his three British Formula 3 wins, scored at Silverstone in October 1999. But after he’d handed over to Adrian’s son Harrison – way too early for my liking – the E-type’s gearbox broke almost immediately. A shame, but for those of us without skin in the game – and without Goodwood-winning car values to consider – results have never been the point at the Revival. Most of us just want to see wonderful cars driven as they were meant to be, and here was another Goodwood memory to cherish.
Button didn’t start from pole, but he’d scorched into the lead by Fordwater from the front row and by the time he came past us at the fast No Name right-hander he’d already opened a couple of lengths. Each lap thereafter he set the Jag up in a perfectly trimmed drift, the back end just stepping out enough to induce a slide judged to the millimetre each and every time. It was a joy to behold as he broke the modern GT lap record at 1min 23.799sec – that was 1.9sec faster than next-best Huff in the Lister-Jaguar coupé! – and opened up a near-14sec gap in a matter of minutes. A safety car interlude pegged him back but, as he said, that just allowed the tyres and brakes to cool so he could go again. By the time he pitted Button was around 20sec to the good. We don’t head down to the Chichester circuit to watch F1-style domination – but let’s make an exception. This was special.
