Peter Lyon
June 5, 2025
As the Festival of Speed prepares to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Formula 1 World Championship, Goodwood is delighted to announce that three of the sport’s foremost technical masterminds will be joining us. Adrian Newey OBE, Managing Technical Partner of the Aston Martin Formula One team, Professor Gordon Murray MBE, Executive Chairman of Gordon Murray Automotive, and Ross Brawn OBE, former Managing Director for Formula 1 Motorsport, will be among a host of famous faces at the biggest celebration of F1 75.
The Festival’s F1 75 celebration will be broken down into six content pillars, each telling their own part of the story of Formula 1: ‘Prologue’, ‘Pioneers’, ‘Innovators’, ‘Underdogs’, ‘Champions’ and ‘Teams’. Formula 1 has always been at the forefront of automotive engineering, and the ‘Innovators’ class will celebrate those who have set new performance benchmarks and inspired design philosophies.
Guests of honour in this class will include Adrian Newey, who has curated the Innovators class with the team at Goodwood. He has been a leading figure in Formula 1 design for nearly 40 years, and is statistically the greatest designer in the sport’s history, with a quite extraordinary 223 Grand Prix victories and 26 World Championships to his credit. He is best known for his long stint at Red Bull where he aided Max Verstappen to win four F1 championships.
His innovative approach has revolutionised car design. Newey has been attending the Festival of Speed regularly since 1994, when he drove his championship-winning Williams FW15C. He returns this year with two cars from his own collection: a Lotus 49 (the model which inspired him to get into motorsport) and Leyton House CG901 (which he designed himself for the 1990 season, and which features a number of trend-setting innovations).
Another welcome guest is none other than Professor Gordon Murray. Hebegan his motorsport journey in his native South Africa, before moving to England and joining Brabham in 1969. He formed a symbiotic partnership with new team owner Bernie Ecclestone, and was appointed Chief Designer aged just 26. He designed a series of ground-breaking, race and championship-winning Brabhams, before moving to McLaren, where he oversaw a period of unparalelled dominance with drivers Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, and cars including the legendary MP4/4. Stepping away from Formula 1, he turned his attention to road cars, single-handedly creating the McLaren F1, which set new standards (many people still regard it as the greatest road car of all time), and won Le Mans at its first attempt. His eponymous company, Gordon Murray Automotive, is the featured marque at this year’s Festival of Speed, with a fabulous Central Feature in front of Goodwood House, and an array of significant cars designed by Murray across the site, all celebrating his extraordinary 60-year career.
Finally, Ross Brawn has consistently pushed the boundaries of technical excellence and design, as the architect behind some of Formula 1’s most celebrated successes. He masterminded all seven of Michael Schumacher’s World Championship victories, before overseeing the ultimate Formula 1 fairytale, when, in 2009, Brawn GP rose from the ashes of Honda Racing to secure the Constructors’ Championship, and the Drivers’ Championship for Jenson Button. After selling the team to Mercedes, he stayed on as team principal, putting in place the foundations for their unprecedented run of Championship success from 2014-21 in which Lewis Hamilton won a fist full of championships. More recently, Brawn played an integral role in modernising Formula 1 as Managing Director of Motorsport, championing sustainable innovation and securing an accessible future for fans and teams alike. Brawn will bring his 2009 Championship-winning Brawn BGP 001, with its novel double diffuser, to the event.
Speaking ahead of the event, Adrian Newey said: “It’s been a real pleasure to work with Goodwood on assembling such a remarkable collection of Formula 1 cars for the Innovators class. It’s a celebration not just of the machines, but of the creativity, craftsmanship, and engineering excellence that have defined the sport over the past 75 years.”
CARLIST THOUGHTS
To have all three of these legends at one event is a coup. Only the Festival of Speed could bring Newey, Murray and Brawn together to celebrate F1. Their resumes speak for themselves. All three had a significant impact on F1 in their own way, and to be honest, once Newey retires—the age of great designers will be over.
