For one weekend in July, the grounds of Lord March’s sprawling Chichester estate in Southern England become the epicenter of the motoring universe. The Goodwood Festival of Speed draws quite literally any and every type of fascinating car to its parking lots, pop-up showrooms, and paddocks. If you were given a whole week to see it all, I reckon that still wouldn’t be enough.
Fans with limited time tend to set up shop somewhere along the 1.17-mile hill climb route, where they witness everything from F1 cars to the latest EVs to early-20th-century rides of the aristocracy dash up the Duke of Richmond’s driveway. It’s the sort of procession that will make you very much ponder skipping lunch, lest you miss your hero machine go whisking, screaming, or thundering past while you’re busy downing a falafel the size of a basketball.
Hard, then, to advocate that anyone peel away from the show’s main stage. I was silly enough to do it anyway.
The forest rally stage, north of the hill climb, is not exactly a secret anymore. Introduced in 2005, then revised, lengthened, and upgraded by Finnish rally legend Hannu Mikkola, this winding track is purpose-built to showcase one of motorsport’s most under-appreciated disciplines—and certainly its most dramatic. To skip it is to miss perhaps the most exciting thing happening at the festival.
No other discipline of motorsport is so era-agnostic when it comes to conveying how hard a driver is pushing the car. You can drum up footage from the Group B days or from a stage somewhere in the world last week, set a layman down in front of it, and easily convince them that the driving on screen is happening at maximum attack. Slides, dust, close calls, jumps—rallying has it all in spades. And all of it—truly, all of that drama—can be found up at the forest rally stage.
Wander through the paddock, and you can see rallying greats up close—Audi Quattro S1s, Lancia Delta Integrales, and Subarus aplenty—but also loads of cars that you may not have heard of, such as the MG Metro 6R4 or the Peugeot 504 Pickup. Keep your head on a swivel, though, as you’ll occasionally have to make way for cars to burble and buzz right through the pits on their way to the start line.
I attended this year’s Festival of Speed with Subaru, the presenting sponsor of the forest rally stage, and a brand that is no stranger to success when the surface gets loose. Though there were plenty of historic WRX and Legacy rally cars present in the paddock, the Subaru with the biggest draw, by far, was the 2025 WRX ARA25 rally car of Travis Pastrana and his co-driver Rhianon Gelsomino.
Pastrana and Gelsomino campaigned the ARA25 in the American Rally Association’s (ARA) open 4WD class last year, to tremendous success. This is a purpose-built rally missile, powered by a 2.0-liter turbocharged flat-four that cranks out roughly 320 hp and 380 lb-ft of torque through a six-speed, close-ratio sequential gearbox. There’s a full cage, crazy aero, and, notably, nothing to keep the occupants cool while queuing up for the start. (My lord, did it get hot in there.)
I had a chance to ride shotgun with Pastrana the morning of the second day, and I was immediately reminded of just how violent a real rally car feels when the driver is hanging it all out there.
The ARA25 uses a special suspension system made by R53, which is taller but also softer, allowing the weight to shift dramatically from corner to corner. I don’t think we were ever actually going perfectly straight the entire time, with pace coming from Pastrana’s preternatural ability to shift the weight (and, by extension, the traction) to and fro in the vehicle to link one slide into another.
Even more remarkable? As we’re blasting along at a pace that I can scarcely absorb, he’s narrating what’s happening in the car and on the track, noting spots where the traction is disappearing, or where a little camber will help us through this corner if we can hook a front (or rear) wheel just right. Communication is the backbone of high-level rally driving, but it’s primarily the co-driver spouting off highly specialized stage notes; the drivers don’t normally talk that much. It felt as if he was taking on both roles while I hung on for dear life, sitting shotgun, trying to stifle the laughter.
The lap took just over two minutes, replete with an epic handbrake-aided donut around a barrel in the middle of the lap that had me momentarily flashing back to watching Pastrana (and his dear friend, the late Ken Block) shred Gymkhana courses. It was car control at its absolute finest, a dance with dirt that left me giggling like a kid.
As we coasted back into the pit and I dismounted rather clumsily, I noticed Pastrana also hopping out of the car, immediately beelining toward the fans that had started to amass outside the tent. He greeted everyone, signing autographs, accepting photo ops, inviting kids to sit in the driver’s seat, and just generally treating those gathered with a level of respect and graciousness that makes it easy to see why he’s loved everywhere in the rally world.
He wasn’t leaving anything in reserve the entire week. The car was covered with rally rash—skirts chewed up by the trail, wings marred by passing trees, scrapes on the wheels and the bodywork. Yes, this is a tool to go fast, and rally is harder on cars than perhaps any other motorsport, but the sheer level of carnage (and the pride everyone supporting that car seemed to take in it) was staggering.
Here’s what makes the forest rally stage the best part of Goodwood in my eyes, though: That level of push, that willingness to ding a corner or nick a panel and hammer on regardless, was not limited to a factory-backed rally car with a hefty demonstration budget. Those privateer cars—the Audi Quattros, the ’70s Porsche 911s, the Ford RS200 Evos—they were all just as beaten up, if not more so.
Everyone was going full send and having a ball doing it. There was a trophy for the fastest timed stage among the historic competitors. The Subaru ARA25 and a handful of WRC cars from Ford, Hyundai, and Toyota were not allowed to compete for the official timed shootout this year because it would have been unfair to the other contestants. Plenty reasonable. But even with nothing other than bragging rights on the line, Pastrana and Gelsomino, as well as the other teams from the WRC, were going at it with the ferocity of an actual stage, shaving tenths at a time and dissecting each drive frantically to find the slightest edge. These are race car drivers, after all; mention a clock, and they’re going to throw down no matter what.
Although it’s for good reason, there are times when the hillclimb portion of Goodwood can feel a bit processional. There’s simply too much downside when you have a near-priceless historic Formula 1 car reaching speeds that barely enter the window where the downforce can work its black magic.
The cars and drivers of the rally stage, by contrast, seemed hellbent on toeing the line between miracle and calamity every single time they set off from the start line. March out to the woods and you could convince yourself you’d time-traveled to the heyday of Group B, the mid ’90s reign of Colin McRae, and the cutting edge of the current sport, all in 10 minutes.
There’s plenty to see at the Goodwood Festival of Speed—too much, at times. But if there’s one can’t-miss attraction, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it’s the rally stage.
