Autoblog

Although we do get our fair share of sports car races over in the States, the popularity of this type of racing, compared to, say, NASCAR, makes it just a blip on the radar. European sports car racing is way more popular. At Goodwood we got a chance to see some great examples of race teams and manufacturers who, over the years, have taken some of their best sports cars and fiddled with them enough to take them racing. OK, in some cases these were definitely not the company's finest vehicles, but for one reason or another they were converted to race duty and were none the worse off for it.

The cars that were displayed or run at Goodwood represented a very eclectic mix of this theory. We saw everything from Sir Stirling Moss driving a Mercedes SLR (complete with scorch marks where the abbreviated exhaust pipes spit on the body) to Lyn St. James behind the wheel of the land speed T-Bird, from Richard Petty's IROC Camaro to a Ferrari 250 GTO. The list was staggering and included the resurrected Jaguar XJ13, last week's GT1-winning Aston Martin DBR9 and the older DBR2, Jaguar low-drag coupe and D-Types, Priaulx's 320Si, McLaren F1, Ferrari F40 LM, Daytona Comp, and 512 BBLM, and the Koenigsegg CCGT. Huge gallery, just click one of the pics.



All photos © 2007 Frank Filipponio / Weblogs, Inc.