The B.A.R.C. Meeting at Goodwood in the ideal weather that prevailed on Easter Monday was motor-racing at its best. It was not surprising that it confirmed the impression that motor-racing has at last achieved recognition and real popularity in this country — the grandstands were packed to capacity, the rails were thick with keen spectators, a ripple of enthusiasm from this vast crowd greeted each dramatic incident and afterwards the traffic flowed back to London in an unbroken, Derby-day stream. The attendance was estimated as 40,000. Everyone seemed pleased with the improvements to Goodwood's amenities, and in spite of a half-hour delay when non-paying members of the crowd invaded the course (having cut a way through a fence to do so), the programme finished on schedule. Our considered advice to anyone who did not attend is: don't miss Goodwood on Whit Monday.
All the old atmosphere of pre-war Brooklands prevailed. The cars that began to fill the parks from 10 a.m. onwards were the same mixed collection of moderns and ancients, odd-looking and conventional, that used to make their way Weybridge-wards in the old days. There were the same sports girls and fashionably-dressed women, just as sporting or fashionable as ever, the same faces in the Paddock, the same hush of expectancy as zero-hour drew near and the inevitable seekers-after-admission-passes hanging hopefully round the Paddock gates. And the grass-grown Paddock produced the usual matters of personal, sartorial and mechanical entertainment.
Naturally, a centre of attraction was Dudley Folland's new 2-litre Ferrari, a beautifully compact car with a real "bonnetful" of engine. The positions of the five forward speeds are conveniently marked, in roman numerals, on the gear-lever knob. It used a Marelli 6v. by 9 starting battery on a small trolley and was shod with Pirelli 5.50-15 front and 6.00-15 rear tyres, it being rumoured that this make of tyre was essential to successful roadholding. Incidentally, Dunlop technicians were busy taking the temperatures of each of the tyres on Parnell's Maserati immediately it returned to the Paddock after its races. It was shod with 6.50-16 rear covers.
