Highs and lows at Goodwood Revival 13-14th September

Olly once again returned to Goodwood Revival in 2025. Partnered with James Cottingham in the Huffaker E-Type for the Moss Trophy, the duo lined up P3 on the grid. James took the start and got into the lead, only for an auxiliary belt to fail, causing the engine temperature to climb, forcing the car into early retirement from the lead.

In the Whitsun Trophy race, Olly qualified his 2024 race-winning Lola T70 Spyder a close 2nd. In the race, Olly made a poor start and managed to recover to third place at the flag, after a race-long scrap with Miles Griffiths McLaren.

For the Sussex Trophy race, Olly was aiming for a hat-trick of wins, having won the race solo in 2023 and in 2024 sharing with Andrew Smith in the longer format race. The weekend started well in a damp qualifying session with Olly securing pole position in the final seconds of the session by just 0.059s from Roger Wills. Olly tried to compensate for too much wheelspin on the practice start by reducing the revs for the actual start. This resulted in the engine stalling and a narrow escape as he restarted the car and was fortunate not to be collected by the passing cars. Dropping to 14th on the opening lap, Olly pushed to regain the lost ground. Battling the 2.5L engined Lotus 15 of Bonamy Grimes, Olly managed to squeeze through just before a red flag interruption caused by an engine failure on Christian Abrecht Scarab, which deposited oil an sent cars spinning in avoidance. At the restart, Olly made up for the earlier mistake and from fourth, he passed James Cottingham Tojiero and James Wood’s Lotus 15 on the opening lap and set off after race leader Chris Ward Jaguar D Type. A daring move on the brakes into Lavant saw Olly take the lead and bring the car home for a fantastic victory, tributed to Historika team owner Kevin Morfett who watched on TV at home. Unfortunately post post-race scrutineering resulted in an exclusion due to a non-performance variation from the car’s 2018 issued HTP.

In the RAC TT Celebration, Olly shared the 1964 AC Cobra “GPG 4C” with 2021 TT Winning partner Darren Turner. Olly set the fastest overall time in the first part of qualifying which with Saturday’s qualifying being in wet conditions, meant that the duo lined up in pole position for the big race on Sunday. This qualifying marked Olly’s first TT pole since 2014! Olly blasted into the lead at the start on Sunday and build a commanding lead. Unfortunately, an early race accident for a Tojiero caused a red flag and the lengthy delays pushed the restarted race well into Sunday’s forecasted rain. Not to be deterred, Olly made a clean re-start and held the lead in wet conditions until handing over to Darren with just under 20 minutes of the race remaining. Unfortunately, a slow pit stop meant Darren resumed in P6 and opted to bring the car home safely in the challenging conditions in P12.

Goodwood was also special in 2025 as Olly’s son Freddie competed in the Settrington Cup race for Austin J40 pedal cars. Freddie completed the race successfully on both days even overtaking some older children! He’ll be back with more leg power in years to come!