Goodwood 77th Members Meeting - With Brabham, Franchitti & Pirro
Well there was a kind of "Back to the Future" atmosphere at the 77th Goodwood Members Meeting.
It was quite a surprise to receive an invitation letter from the Duke of Richmond ( formerly Lord March ) and by the way to hear about the LMP demonstration run at the event. LMP started back in 1999 with the LMP900 and LMP675 categories, Goodwood thought it was a good idea to celebrate its 20 years, a pretty good one actually.
Art & Revs brought our US customer’s Panoz LMP ( aka the « Batmobile » ) from 1999 Le Mans along with our Alpine LMP2 from 2015 WEC and Le Mans.
Immediately after receiving the invitation, Art & Revs thought this would be a great occasion for David Brabham to drive the Panoz for the first time since 2002. David kindly accepted and made himself available for the Saturday evening run. As David was not available for the Sunday session, we asked Emmanuele Pirro to drive the Panoz. With two Le Mans winners at her wheel, let's say she had a pretty hectic week end.
The Iconic Alpine and most recent car of the demo was not empty handed at all, it was driven by the amusing and gentle Marino Franchitti. Marino used to race a lot of top LMP cars and was very curious and enthusiastic about driving the Alpine.
All of the runs went well with the Panoz thundering at night and Marino with 4 clear laps probably set one of the quickest lap times ever of the Goodwood Circuit. David had huge success and remembered how popular the Panoz were back in the day. He is a very intelligent and accessible guy and it was a great feeling to drive his old "girl friend" like he said.
All of the Art & Revs and Iconic Racing team had stars in their eyes throughout the week end. It was such a great feeling to bring so recent Le Mans cars onto a track that stopped in time in 1965. However the wheel of time keeps on turning and this was a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate these cars to a new public and anticipate the next steps of historic racing.
The 77th Members Meeting was a fantastic event that truly lived up to its reputation.
