Author: The Greenpower Team
After a hugely successful return to racing on 13 September at Castle Coombe, Greenpower is back to our ‘home ground’. On 11 October, we return to the circuit where it all started – Goodwood.
Located just ten minutes from our Fontwell headquarters, Goodwood is considered to be Greenpower’s spiritual home. It is where the first ever event - initially conceived as a one-off – was held in October 1999, with 22 competitors taking part.
Since then Goodwood has been a staple on the Greenpower calendar, and has also played host to our first international final in 2014 which saw teams from the USA, Poland, Portugal and South Africa travel to the UK to compete. After 21 years getting young people inspired about science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), we have grown to support 750 teams and 11,000 students a year through our design-build-race challenge.
After a long break due to the coronavirus pandemic, Greenpower has worked closely to follow government and Motorsport UK guidelines and adheres to all the regulations to ensure every participant is safe when attending our events. We are all thrilled and grateful that we are able to slowly get back to racing.
The Castle Coombe round (13 September) made a great start to this reduced calendar, and it was great to see some of our participants hop back into their electric cars. We have also loved hearing how our teams ensured they could continue their Greenpower activities through lockdown. Zoom meetings, virtual racing and a lot of help from parents and grandparents all played a huge role to enable teams to be ready to go when they took to the track last month.
Trevor Cook, Greenpower Volunteer from the POD movement (POD-SIX) said: “As ever Greenpower came up trumps with Sunday's COVID-restricted, brilliantly organised event at Castle Combe. Even in these tough times we can still give an opportunity for kids to develop their STEM skills through designing and racing their electric cars.”
“It's good to be racing again!”, added John from Team Bird.
And now we are back for more. This time, Goodwood will play host to 30 F24 and F24+ teams in our second event of 2020. The line-up is full to our new normal COVID secure capacity.
Though it has been a tough year the enthusiasm from our participating teams is clear to see, and Goodwood is the perfect venue to bring our community together once again.
“Goodwood and Greenpower have a long intertwined history,” said our CEO Paul van Veggel. “Ever since the first Greenpower event, we have received incredible support from our Patron the Duke of Richmond. Some of the most famous cars in motorsport and automotive history have taken to the track at Goodwood, and it has always been a special moment for our participants to compete on the same tarmac in the cars they have designed and built themselves. We are all very much looking forward to our Goodwood homecoming.”
