Goodwood’s watch ambassadors prop up its classic car revival

The sight of Rolex-branded clock towers across international racetracks has been one of the more ubiquitous signs of the watchmaker’s sponsorship of motorsport over the past century.

Rolex currently supports multiple racing competitions, from the Le Mans 24 Hours to the 24 Hours at Daytona, and from the World Endurance Championship to the Monterey Motorsports Reunion held during California’s annual Monterey Car Week.

But, while its role as official watch and official timing partner of Formula One is rumoured to be coming to an end in 2025 after a dozen seasons, there is another, more established automotive partnership to which Rolex recently recommitted for the long term.

The annual Goodwood Revival, starting today and running over the weekend, recreates a golden era of motor racing that began in 1948 when the perimeter road encircling the nearby RAF Westhampnett Battle of Britain fighter base was converted into a race circuit.

It was the first dedicated motor racing venue to operate after the second world war and became the UK’s principal circuit — until it had to close in 1966, having been deemed unsuitable for the increasingly powerful competition cars of the day.

But, 50 years later, classic-motorsport impresario Charles Gordon-Lennox — now the Duke of Richmond — brought the 2.3-mile circuit roaring back to life with the creation of the Goodwood Revival, a weekend of historic racing for era-appropriate automobiles at which competitors and spectators are encouraged to dress in vintage attire.

The Revival has since become one of the most successful and eagerly anticipated classic-car events in the world — its reputation enhanced by the arrival of Rolex as an official sponsor in 2004.

During the intervening 20 years the brand has helped to raise the Revival’s profile by bringing along some of its celebrity ambassadors (or “testimonees”, in Rolex-speak) from the world of motorsport, including former F1 stars Mark Webber and Jenson Button and Denmark’s Tom Kristensen — the only person to have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans nine times.

Last year, this trio thrilled the crowds when they competed against one another in a field of 30 pre-1966 Porsche 911s during the annual Fordwater Trophy.

The cars ran on the same sustainable biofuel that will be used in all of this weekend’s 15 races — creating what Goodwood describes as a “landmark moment”: the world’s first historic motorsport event to be entirely run on the petrol, 70 per cent of which is made from sustainable components.

“What’s so exciting about these fuels is that they can guarantee the future of historic racing, enabling us to enjoy combustion engine cars for years to come,” said Button after last year’s race, in which he finished ninth.

But the one racer most often seen at the Revival is Formula One triple world champion Sir Jackie Stewart. At last year’s 25th Revival, the Flying Scot, now 85, marked the 50th anniversary of his third World Championship victory with a lap of the circuit in his winning car, the Tyrrell 006.

It was a poignant moment, not least because it was after Stewart was seen racing at Goodwood in 1963 that the circuit’s track manager encouraged Ken Tyrrell — who founded his eponymous racing team in 1958 — to contact him and offer him a drive.

Stewart made his debut for Tyrrell in an F3 car the following year, ending up as champion.

He subsequently went on to win the 1969 F1 world championship with Tyrrell’s Matra International team, after which Tyrrell began building cars under his own name, with Stewart driving them to his other world championship wins in 1971 and 1973.

It is fitting, then, that Stewart’s role as the longest-serving Rolex ambassador (he and the late golfer Arnold Palmer were the first official signings during the late 1960s) should have taken him back to Goodwood — and even more fitting that, on Sunday, he will inaugurate the Tyrrell Shed.

In its derogatory context as a description of a neglected automobile, the phrase “Look at that old shed” is redundant during the Goodwood Revival, where some of the world’s finest and most valuable historic competition cars compete wheel to wheel.

But this particular “old shed” is set to be the centre of attention — because it is where every Tyrrell-built racing car was constructed, including Stewart’s 1971 and 1973 championship winners, until the company was sold in 1998.

The former military hut will be officially opened by Stewart and the Duke, following its relocation to the Hurricane Lawn on the track’s infield from its original site more than 40 miles away in Ockham, Surrey.

Tyrrell was 35 when he commandeered the 45ft by 20ft building — then part of his family’s timber yard — to use as a racing-car workshop.

The land subsequently became an industrial estate, the expansion of which looked set to result in the shed’s loss until the Goodwood estate launched a successful campaign to save it and relocate it to the Hurricane Lawn.

Visitors to the Goodwood Members’ Meeting — a separate motor racing event held in April — were given a preview of the shed in its partly reconstructed state. Now, though, it is fully rebuilt, complete with an interior recreated by Revival set designer Peter Russell, which shows the Tyrrell workshop as it would have been in its heyday.

Russell has worked with the Revival since the beginning, dressing public areas of the circuit with original old signs, automobilia and vehicles. About 250 actors, 250 Goodwood staff members and up to 280 waiters and waitresses are kitted out in period outfits to ensure an authentic vintage vibe.

“The fact that Sir Jackie regularly attends the Revival with Rolex always adds a great deal to the event, and we’re especially pleased that he can be here to inaugurate the Tyrrell Shed,” says the Duke.

“It was after his first test at Goodwood for Ken Tyrrell that his career really took off, and he became a Rolex testimonee in the year immediately before his first World Championship win in a Tyrrell team car.”