Surreal. There is no other word to describe taking part in the Goodwood Festival of Speed and driving up the Duke of Richmond’s driveway in front of thousands of spectators and in the most esteemed motorsport company imaginable.

The batch in which our Works Lancia Alitalia Racing Stratos HF Group IV participated, for example, included, among others, the 1966 Le Mans-winning Ford GT40, the Napier Railton Special and a gaggle of Audi and Mercedes-Benz ‘Silver Arrows’. The corresponding driver column on the entry list noted multiple Le Mans winners Tom Kristensen, Derek Bell and ‘Dindo’ Capello, World Rally Champion Miki Biasion and former Formula 1 stars Thierry Boutsen and Karun Chandhok.

Somehow, when you’re a part of this gloriously surreal circus and not clamouring for a view from the sidelines, your patience while what feels like endless waiting appears to know no bounds. Similarly, your anxiety as you watch the needle on the temperature gauge steadily rise as you idle in the sweltering heat before the start dissipates like the tyre smoke of the cars ahead of you.

Satisfyingly, almost every member of Team Girardo & Co. had the privilege of driving at this year’s Festival of Speed. Hill-climb veteran Max was invited by a very kind owner to drive their Works Lancia Martini Racing 037 Rally Evo 2. If you know Max, you’ll know the 037 is a car closer to his heart than virtually any other, since he owns the example him and his late father used to rally together.

Marcus and Davide, in the meantime, both enjoyed spirited runs with the white, green and red Stratos – a car that garnered so much love and adoration across the weekend. “For an Italian of my vintage, you have no idea how important that Lancia is to me,” Davide excitedly exclaimed after his run on Saturday afternoon. “It was pretty much the only model car my generation had – driving it here is such a privilege.”

Our Stratos is an ultra-rare factory-built Group IV car campaigned by the Works Lancia Alitalia Racing team in the 1977 World Rally Championship. If you know your apples from your onions, you’ll know that most competition Lancia Stratos’ began life as ‘standard’ HF Stradale models which were then upgraded to Group IV rally specification by a small number of well-known specialists such as University Motors or Claudio Maglioli. The factory competition cars, however, of which there were approximately 26, were built as such by Lancia itself and left Turin ready to rally.

Originally registered to Fiat Auto S.p.A. with the Turin number ‘TO N14328’, chassis number 1770 was raced by the late Sandro Munari during his victorious 1977 campaign, more specifically in the 1977 RAC Rally of Great Britain, during which he scored two special-stage victories. The Lancia is small, sharp, shouty, is dressed in perhaps the greatest livery ever to grace a competition sports car and has cream corduroy upholstery. A bizarre choice, you’d think, for the RAC – among the muddiest rallies on the calendar.

For Alex Easthope, Alex Markham and Ryenne, the Stratos assumed a greater significance for it served as the shuttle for their first-ever drives at the Festival of Speed. Anticipation, elation, disbelief – these emotions were all rife as they each left the assembly areas ahead of their respective runs. Needless to say, they were just as prevalent afterwards once they’d all safely summited the hill. 

“I grew up in Chichester and my dad used to bring me to the Festival of Speed every year when I was a boy,” recalls Alex. “Between him and this event, they’re probably the reason I became obsessed with cars in the first place. Driving up the hill was a boyhood dream realised and the most surreal full-circle moment. Unbelievable!” Ryenne was similarly enthused after her run on Sunday morning. “That was so cool!” she said. “The perspective of the event from the driver’s seat is at complete odds with what you experience as a spectator – I want to do it all over again!”

Elsewhere, our 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO sat pretty on the Cartier Style et Luxe lawn all weekend, while in this, Ducati’s centenary year, we also showed two very special factory Ducati Corse MotoGP bikes from the Girardo & Co. stable: a Desmosedici GP5 raced by Loris Capirossi in 2005 and a Desmosedici GP7 raced by Casey Stoner during his championship-winning 2007 MotoGP campaign. Marcus and Peter were afforded five minutes with Stoner himself and confirmed that the phrase ‘never meet your heroes’ is a load of rubbish.

Ridden during Stoner’s race-winning Turkish Grand Prix weekend, the latter is an especially significant piece of motorsport history, for it played a vital role in securing Ducati its first MotoGP champion and the company its first ‘triple crown’ – that is the Riders’, Constructors’ and Teams’ titles. Quite remarkably, it was the first time a non-Japanese manufacturer had won motorcycling’s premier class since MV Agusta in over three decades prior in 1974.

Photos: Robert Cooper for Girardo & Co. 

If you’d like to learn more about any of the cars we exhibited at this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, feel free to get in touch using the form below...