Goodwood Revival 18th 19th and 20th September 2009

This year’s Goodwood Revival saw us running two cars as we did at this event a year ago, the white 1960 DB4GT and the 1951 DB2 Aston Martin works team car. The DB4GT would once again be in the ‘Royal Automobile Club TT Celebration’ which is the two drivers, one hour feature race. The DB2 was entered in the ‘Freddie March Memorial Trophy’ which was a twenty five minute single driver race.

Qualifying for the DB4GT was over two days (Friday & Saturday) for thirty minutes each session. The fastest time for either session would determine grid position. The DB2 qualifying session was a twenty minute session on Friday.

Prior to this weekend, team owner Tom Alexander had been busier than normal with work commitments and had asked Adrian Willmott to come along as a reserve driver. When Tom arrived Thursday afternoon, although in good spirit, he was exhausted and decided not to drive but to spend the weekend relaxing with his family.

DB4GT drivers: Adrian Willmott and Tiff Needell
DB2 driver: Adrian Willmott.

Qualifying

In the first TT session our best time of 1:32.29 which was achieved by Adrian, was good enough to put us 20th in the 30 car grid. However the rival DB4GT qualified 19th four tenths of a second faster than us. In second qualifying session it was Tiff who was fastest with a time of 1:31.85 which was only four hundredths of a second faster than our rivals, as they had engine failure they didn’t better their time and we pinched 19th position off them. Although 19th on the grid we were the fastest Aston Martin with a grid full of mostly Ferrari and E-type Jaguars.

The DB2’s qualifying went well with Adrian posting a time of 1:42.17 which was good enough for 17th on this 28 car grid.

Race

The TT race was first in which Tiff was starting. As the flag dropped, a cloud of smoke appeared from the grid as all the cars frantically tried to get the power down, wheel spinning some 30 meters or more. Tiff came round in 15th position at the end of the first lap which he maintained until being over taken by the Project car on lap 10. Our car was miss-firing and Tiff was struggling to keep the lap times in the 32’s. Pitting on lap 19 for Adrian to take over.

Having driven the car before with a miss fire at Le Mans earlier in the year, Adrian knew what to expect and a good pit stop was then wasted as we were held at the end of the pit lane costing us another 10 seconds.

The Project car pitted on lap 22 and after rejoining the circuit, now had a 16 second lead over us. Adrian was driving smoother than in the qualifying sessions trying to keep the speed up as the misfire hindered the acceleration. Adrian then did a lap time of 1:31.61 which was our fastest of the weekend and proceeded to reel in the Project car. Consistent lap times saw him close the gap to 6 seconds as he took the chequered flag.

As some lead cars had retired due to breaking down, Classification saw us finish in 9th position with the Project car in 8th.

The DB2’s race followed the TT and Adrian had to run down to the collecting area and jump into the car still sweaty from driving the DB4GT.

The DB2 was quickly overtaken at the start of the race and it was clear that although the cars behind us on the grid had not qualified well they were all faster. Adrian bettered his qualifying time by a second and the car came in the pits on lap 11 as it was overheating due to being driven hard. We took the decision to retire the car as we didn’t want to damage the engine.