Our final contestant (#5) is Neil. Neil and I met a couple of years ago and he has continued to be someone who impresses me on a regular basis. Neil is a carbon fiber specialist by both education and trade. His title is Advanced Product Development with Oakley, where he gets to work on some seriously cool and groundbreaking projects. There is a particularly incredible project Neil has been doing that has had me very excited for some time now (if you search Oakley on this blog you’ll find a little something on it, note - not the Porsche tuner).

Neil is a true car enthusiast with both the passion and the educational background to fully appreciate the high tech materials and tuning techniques involved. I’ve never met anyone that knows more about carbon fiber than this man. Due to his busy schedule, he would not be a consistently active contributor to the blog however I’m confident that on the occasion he has something to say that it will be interesting and insightful.

Please cast your vote by commenting WIN both here and on Facebook if you choose. This has been a really fun process to introduce five great people who I admire and to let the readers here have a say in deciding the future of the blog.

— Neil’s Original Post —

Seven years ago I learned about Goodwood’s Festival of Speed and I’ve wanted to go ever since. While I lived in the UK, circumstances somehow conspired against my dad and I each year to stop us from going. Now, 6500 miles away from home, the opportunity somehow arrived. A business trip had me in London and the rest sorted itself out in no time.

For those unfamiliar with Goodwood’s event, it is utterly phenomenal. Lord March hosts over 100 years worth of racing vehicles on his grounds for a 3 day Hill Climb event. The caliber of racing drivers and vehicles that attend the race boggles the mind. Walter Rohl, Jackie Stewart, Sir Stirling Moss, Lewis Hamilton, Bruno Senna (Ayrtons nephew), Mark Webber and even Jay Leno were just a few of the drivers hitting the hill climb this year. The range of vehicles covers the entire spectrum. 1930’s Silver Bullets, 50 years of Formula One cars, touring cars, rally cars, sports cars, supercars and prototypes are all raced.

Today’s racing events can leave me with a feeling of disconnect - drivers being ushered out of the pits in secrecy, VIP’s in all the prime locations and spectators kept at a too-safe distance. Goodwood is entirely different. The drivers relax and chat with the spectators, you can get run over in the pits (I got clipped by the wing of a Porsche 917) and you spectate just meters from the single lane, hay bale lined track. I can’t describe just how fun it is.

Obviously though, the most fun part is the racing. As a Design Engineer this event gives me HUGE satisfaction. We engineers design things to function – cars are built to run. Race cars are built to run HARD. This event takes that theory to the extreme. All too often, especially in SoCal, the most wonderful performance vehicles never get run anywhere near their potential, or run at all!! That breaks my heart – engineers put their life and soul into these vehicles and they just sit! However, Goodwood appears to exist to restore my belief in the world – these cars don’t only run, they get utterly hammered up the single lane track. Mark Webber sliding his F1 car at WOT past me actually left me deaf in my left ear for about 10 minutes, it was glorious. Jackie Stewart is a great friend of my dad, who had a tear in his eye when Jackie thundered by us in his 68 Lola F1 car, right at the limit. Jackie is 70 and hadn’t driven the car since the Nurburgring in 68 – it was incredible.

The highlight for me was seeing a Pagani Zonda R rip up the hill. It was the only road car with a sound that eclipsed the dedicated race cars. It’s ferocity and aggression blew my mind. Included is a short youtube clip I took of it. I didn’t get it going up the hill as I was too busy watching!

I feel extremely lucky to have attended this event and hope it’s an experience I can repeat in the future. Make the trip once in your life, you’ll love every minute.

And here’s a link of photos from the event (by Autoblog): http://www.autoblog.com/photos/goodwood-festival-of-speed-2009-1/