Goodwood Revival – historic racing, best of bygone days… and tea and cake on the motor circuit

We caught up with Sarah Bullen, general manager of the event, to find out what Revival actually is all about – and some of the angles you rarely hear about.

Sarah, let's start with talking about Revival itself. If somebody's new to it, how would you explain Revival?

It's a three-day event that celebrates a period of time, 1948 to 1966, when the motor circuit had live racing and was in its heyday. We have the very best in historic racing around the circuit – very competitive and the most beautiful cars, worth millions of pounds, racing wheel to wheel.

But it's not only the motorsport side. There is a huge number of immersive experiences people can enjoy. Everything from fashion, amazing exhibitors, shopping. We've got our Revive and Thrive stage where we talk all about reusing and recycling and our workshops where people can learn different things about the event. There's dancing, music, everybody dresses up. You feel completely in another world.

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It has this amazing feel when 50,000 people are all dressed up and entering into the spirit of the event, an amazing atmosphere. To help bring everything to life we have actors and pop-up performances.

Revival has been going longer than that 1948-66 period hasn’t it?

It started in 1998 and has grown hugely. Our international audience has grown a massive amount as well, many people visit us from all over the world.

Do many people come every year?

We’ve a big core audience – the diehard fans and a lot of our members will be on the phone the day we go on sale to make sure that they secure the very best tickets. But we continually evolve the event every year to ensure there's something new for those people to enjoy.

But it’s vital to attract new people too…?

Yes, over 27 years, that original audience is getting that little bit older. So it's attracting a new younger audience too and we have to keep a close eye on what the trends are, what people are interested in seeing. That’s been a huge part of bringing in Revive and Thrive and that fashion audience to the event.

We work really closely with a lot of our partners to make sure we're reinventing Revival while still keeping the core values.

What are the benefits to the local area and economy?

We attract visitors from all around the UK and those that come internationally, a lot are with us for more than a three-day period so are using B&Bs, restaurants, pubs. We had a study done in 2023 and it showed that the economic impact of Goodwood is sort of £343m of expenditure to the local economy through exhibitors, visitors, partners. So it is a huge part of Chichester and the surrounding area. We like to think that we give quite a lot back as part of delivering the event.

We work hard in terms of our charity partnerships as well. We give away about £15,000 of event tickets to local charities so they can raise funds. We also work with a charity each year and this year it’s the King's Trust International – we typically raise about £65,000 over the weekend for charity.

There are other brilliant local initiatives – we're working with local schools to make sure they're benefiting and learning and they come to the event on a lovely vintage bus and enjoy the atmosphere and learn a little bit of history. Those kind of projects are key.

What about temporary jobs created?

Goodwood employ about 300 casual staff just to boost our existing 800-strong team that work here at Goodwood full-time, and we have about 200 volunteers as well that support us. On top of that we have catering teams, security teams – a huge amount of additional staffing support.

When do you start to plan each year's revival?

We actually start to plan about three to five years in advance of each event – the longer term planning when you're looking at what's going on in the events industry, trends, what customers are interested. Some of those big projects do take a little while in the planning.

Then there’s the more medium-term planning, about 18 months worth. So we have already picked our themes for next year. I'm not going to give anything away but tickets go on sale for 2026 Revival on the Monday after the event for all the customers that have been with us before. Our official on-sale time for new visitors will be in October.

Then the actual ‘event build’ itself is about a five-week build and a two-week breakdown. It goes up relatively quickly for the volume of building.

The operations team has sort of got a meticulous build schedule so we're very clear what's going in when. That’s important because we use a lot of companies, local ones as well, who might have relatively small teams. I'm always amazed at how quickly it goes up.

Do you do a lot of liaising with the local authorities?

That's a big part of it. You do what you can with highways to minimise the effect on the roads and so on, and to manage it. It's inevitable that there's going to be increased traffic with an event on this scale. We work incredibly hard to mitigate that.

We work with our local parish councils and ensure we do as much as possible and meet with the safety advisory groups and local agencies, both debriefing after event and in the planning stages.

We review all our plans really closely with us and give us lots of advice and support in terms of then what we can do to make it as safe as possible with minimal disruption. We work incredibly closely with highways and are constantly tweaking plans and trying new things.

Sustainability and environmental issues are quite important to you – what do you do on that side?

We're one of the first events businesses to be awarded the ISA 20121 standard. We got it in 2012 when they brought it in for the London Olympic Games. It’'s something that ensures the events industry strives to think about sustainability at the forefront of all planning.

We've done many things over the years. That's constantly involving and at times does involve investment from Goodwood in order to deliver the very best. That’s the direction we all need to be heading in.

We had a huge success at Festival of Speed with a new waste transfer station where we saw a 40 per cent improvement in recycling across the business., so we’re introducing that for Revival as well. Then we make sure any waste is properly sorted – we're excited to see how that improves our recycling performance.

We also work hard with our prop and our set builds because they're quite substantial. We reuse and recycle an awful lot of props and store them here at Goodwood and reuse them every year.

We always look to sell sets for a charitable donation as well. So there’s not necessarily a financial gain to Goodwood, but it means it doesn't go into landfill. In fact, there's a UFO somewhere in somebody's garden that they purchased a couple of years ago from us for a charitable donation!

And last year was the first year we introduced sustainable fuels for all of our cars, a huge step for historic racing and something that we're continuing to look to do this year, with plans in the future to improve upon that even further.

So, the let’s talk about the 2025 event, let's say I've never been before, how am I going to spend my day?

There's loads going on on the track. I'd encourage you to get a grandstand seat if you're really interested in the racing because that guarantees that you can view it. But even without it, there's viewing all around the track and complimentary shuttles to get everybody around the track to view it from different points. And we've got big screens that allow you to see it all in all the major locations.

On the track, there are some great celebrations this year, we’re celebrating Jim Clark’s life and his career in motor racing with some unbelievable cars all together in one place. And we'll be doing a VE Day moment on track this year, which is going to be really special in the 80th anniverary year, plus a whole street party with music, dancing, tea and cake. Only at Goodwood would you serve tea and cake on the circuit during a live track day. You could call it fast food!

And opening the track each morning, we'll have our VW Type 2 camper van celebration – 100 VW Type 2 camper vans, a big array of colour that will go around the circuit. That'll be quite special.

The really beautiful 60s period ones are all very hippy-like and glamorous – positioned up on our gate two entrance, which is where we'll have a big celebration of the end of the 48-66 period, when we saw the rise of that hippy culture. That will be a sea of colour and fun brought to life with our actors.

We’ve a stage there this year, one of 10 we've got across the site. We've another new stage in our Temple Court area, which is a homage to Mods and Rockers and 60s counter-culture – bands will play music by the likes of The Who and The Small Faces.

Other stuff off the track includes all the trade stands and exhibitors, a lot selling amazing vintage stuff, but also general trade items.

We have our Revive and Thrive Village, where we're welcoming back Dita Von Teese on stage in talks with Dandy Wellington, and she'll be discussing all things vintage and cars.

We will have a workshop area and Dom Chinea will host that with his army of just amazing craftsmen that will be working on things and showcasing a lot of heritage skills as well.

But there’s much more too – literally something around every corner, a load of pop-up performances and quirky things in betwen.

We've got planes as well – the Freddie March Spirit of Aviation, the most beautiful display of planes. And in terms of flypasts, the dawn patrol runs at 8am each day – a 10-minute display of Spitfires and Hurricanes as well.

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