Goodwood 1999

The 1999 Goodwood Festival of Speed, Year one to formula One - a Millennium of Horsepower, reunited a great gathering of famous faces with their cars. Two Belgian all time great drivers attended this years Festival.

Paul Frére, brilliant Belgian motoring writer and rapid driver began his racing career in the 1948 Spa 24 hours. He won the Grand Prix des Frontières for HWM in 1952, drove F1 Ferrraris to Fourth and second in the 1955 - 1956 Belgian Grand Prix, and raced his first Le Mans in 1954 for Aston Martin. In 1960 he won Le Mans for Ferrari with compatriot Olivier Gendebien. Now 82 Frère command huge respect among his peers. The picture shows Frère reunited with the Ferrari Testa Rossa in which he co-drove with Olivier Gendebien to victory in 1960.

Jacky Ickx is "monsieur Le Mans". Ickx is the son of a Belgian motoring journalist and historian Jacques Ickx. He honed his teenage talents as three-times Belgian motorcycle trials champion before driving a Lotus Cortina to a national championship win in 1965. Just 21 he was catapulted straight into Ken Tyrell's Matra formula 2 team for 1966 and qualified his tiny car third fastest amongst all the F1 stars in the German Grand Prix.

Ickx proper debut came in a Cooper-Maserati at the 1967 Italian GP, immediately scoring a championship point. Meanwhile he shone as youthfull lead driver in John Wyer's Gulf-JW long-distance team, driving its big 5.7-litre Mirage version of the Ford GT40.

Ferrari snapped up Ickx's services for 1968, rewarded by a win in the rain-soaked French GP at Rouen and three tird places. Ickx then joined Brabham for 1969, and beat Jackie Stewart's Tyrell Matra Ford to win the German and Canadian GP's. And at Le Mans that year his Gulf-JW GT40 beat Hans Hermann's Porsche by barely 100 metres afther the most sensational 24-Hour race ever.

Back at Ferrari for 1970-1973 he led both the Formula 1 and sports car teams, winning five GP's and mynad 1000 km endurance races. In 1974-1975 he starred at Team lotus, winning a spectacularly wet Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, before ending his F1 career with spells at Williams, Ensign and Ligier. Meanwhile his endurance racing skills earned him five more Le Mans victories in 1975 (Gulf-Mirage), thereafther in Porsches. The 1982 season also saw him win at Spa, Fuji and Brands Hatch to take the sports-car drivers' World Endurance Championship title. Jacky Ickx has since shone brilliantly in Paris-Dakar and is hugely respected throughout the motor sporting world. He is quite simply one of the all time greats.