If you’re not familiar with what the hillclimb is, it’s the principal attraction at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. And with crashes bound to happen during any type of racing, it only makes sense it would happen in one of the most popular events.
According to Goodwood’s website, “Taking place throughout the weekend, this challenging white-knuckled 1.16-mile course starts as a tree-lined run through the southern corner of the Goodwood Estate which then turns to sweep past the front of Goodwood House before climbing a steep and narrow Estate road bordered by flint walls and dense woodland groves towards Goodwood’s equine racecourse on top of the magnificent South Downs.
Each day, no fewer than 300 cars and motorcycles sprint their way up the iconic Hillclimb in a truly inspiring display of performance, power and pace. The vehicles are grouped thematically into classes of comparable machinery, with the oldest running first. The course rises over 300ft from the start line to the finish, and is very technical and challenging, putting the skills of the world’s very best drivers and riders to the ultimate test of concentration and speed.”
But of course Mazda, being the main sponsor, came prepared this year with several other vintage racecars. Some of which included another 767B, a Tiga-Mazda GT286, and an RX7-GTO. It’s truly sad to see such an amazing part of racing history perish, however, at least the car died doing what it loved – racing. Hopefully Mazda has plans to restore this beauty to it’s former glory, so that it may live to race another day.