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Honda hails Goodwood Festival of Speed 2014 a roaring success

Honda celebrated a successful four days at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, welcoming thousands of visitors to its interactive stand and innovative showcase of cars, motorcycles, and racing machinery. To see what Honda got up to, check out the feature video of the weekend's highlights. Taking centre stage on the main Honda stand were pre-launch concept versions of the NSX supercar and Civic Type R, which attracted huge numbers of visitors. Final production versions of both cars will land in the UK in 2015.

Hundreds participated in the interactive Honda mini race track, competing head-to-head using remote-controlled versions of the NSX and Honda Civic Type R Concepts. The fastest lap of the weekend was just 16.27 seconds, achieved by Brazilian racing legend Bruno Senna in a race many would argue provided an equal level of excitement, competitiveness and racing spirit to that seen on the renowned Hillclimb.

Under the guidance of Honda's instructors and three-time World Motocross Champion, Dave Thorpe, and multiple British Motocross Champion, Stephen Sword, over 1,000 visitors participated in a series of 20-minute taster sessions around an exhilarating and challenging off road motorcycle trail course. This raised £3,180 for the Goodwood Festival of Speed's official Beneficiary, Chestnut Tree House Children's Hospice.

Alongside the cars on display, a selection of Honda racing classics from the Honda Collection Hall in Japan took to the famous Goodwood Hillclimb. These included Senna's McLaren Honda MP4/4, driven over the weekend by Japanese racer Takuya Izawa, and the 1965 RA272 F1 racer piloted by touring car stalwart and current Castrol Honda WTCC driver, Gabriele Tarquini.

The NSR500 and RC164 two-wheel machines also made the trip to the Festival, with former 500cc world champion, "Fast Freddie" Spencer, reunited with the NSR500, and former Grand Prix winner, Stuart Graham, displaying his skills on an RC164, one of Honda's jewels from the mid-sixties.

The world famous Goodwood track also witnessed a selection of current Honda motorcycling stars racing across the three day event, including multiple Isle of Man TT winner John McGuinness, and World Superbike duo Leon Haslam and Jonathan Rea - all on their CBR1000 RR Fireblades. Collectively, these six machines and the two Concept vehicles travelled 30,933 miles to be at Goodwood, while the riders and drivers covered 14,489 miles to be part of the event.

Honda delivered a multi-location showcase at this year's Festival of Speed, spanning 18,000sq metres of the Goodwood estate, with a focus on creating fun and interactive content that would excite and entertain visitors. Philip Crossman, Managing Director, Honda (UK), commented: "We wanted to step away from the traditional motorshow stand display and do something different that visitors could engage with. The Honda race track and motocross experience delivered perfectly on that objective. We have a very exciting future with some iconic models being launched next year and our aim was to continue building that anticipation and really shout ‘Honda is Back', which we certainly achieved. Goodwood Festival of Speed is a fantastic event - not just displaying our cars but also celebrating our motorcycle range and offering people the opportunity to give two wheels a go; I'm delighted that over 1,000 took part. Our rich racing history is very important to Honda, particularly with our return to Formula 1 next year, and being able to bring over some very special machinery from Japan and showcase them on the famous Hillclimb is a real highlight of mine."

The Goodwood Festival of Speed is a unique summer weekend that brings together an impossibly heady mix of cars, stars and motor sport ‘royalty' to create the largest car culture event in the world.