Goodwood Festival of Speed 2018: the best of Porsche

Porsches of all kinds are out in force at this year's Festival of Speed.

This year the marque celebrates its 70th birthday, and has taken over Goodwood for the 2018 festival of speed. All manner of road cars, Le Mans legends, single-seater racers, GTs and prototypes are on display at the show, including the 356 sports car that kick-started the brand back in 1948.

The Goodwood Sculpture

This year's Goodwood sculpture, once again produced by British artist and designer Gerry Judah, stands taller than Nelson's Column and commemorates some of the most important cars Porsche ever made, including the 911, 959 group B rally car, and the one that started it all - the original 356.

The first of Judah's sculptures was unveiled in 1997, and they have since become a focal point of the show. 

Inside the Porsche 356

The first production car Porsche ever made, the 356 was first produced in 1948 and saw 76,000 roll out of the factory by 1965.

The 356 takes to the hill

The rear-engine, rear-wheel drive two-door coupe set the formula Porsche would go on to champion for the next 70 years. It was available in coupe and cabriolet versions, and would have cost US$3,750 at launch.

Porsche 911 Carrera RSR Turbo 2.1

This prototype, Martini-liveried 911 competed in the 1974 24 Hours of Le Mans as a prototype, with forced induction, wide arches and a giant ducktail wing.

Porsche Carrera Cup racer

The Porsche Carrera Cup Great Britain uses identical 911 GT3 Cup cars, each producing 485bhp. Now in its sixteenth year, the series is a firm fixture in the UK's motorsport calendar.

Porsche 911 GT3 Carrera Cup racer on the hill

The GT3 Carrera Cup has a 3.8-litre, six-cylinder boxer engine that revs to 7500rpm. It's the first Porsche makes cup race car to use paddle shift gears.

Porsche 911 GT3 RS burnout

The GT3 RS has always been Porsche's pure-bred road racer, and this latest 991.2 generation is, according to GT boss Andreus Preuninger, "the closest link to motorsport we have ever had".

911 Speedster concept

The latest 911 Speedster is expected to be revealed later this summer. Seen here in concept form, it should borrow the GT3's naturally-aspirated 4.0-litre flat six engine.

Rothmans Porsche 961

Based on the 959 sports car, the 961 was built for Group B rally, at a time when the 956 and 962C were tearing things up in Group C. The project didn't last long, with only one car built and three races run. Plans to produce a customer version were shelved when the Group B class was cancelled - making this example something of a unicorn. This prototype ran in Le Mans, and was reclassified to enter the Camel GT Championship in the USA before the project was eventually retired. 

Porsche LMP2000

This prototype racer, developed between 1998 and 2000, was purpose-built for Le Mans - but never raced there. Designed around a tweaked version of the 3.5-litre V10 originally destined for Formula One in 1992, with versions developed with 5 and 5.5 litre capacities, but ultimately only one car was built, and the project was binned before it could see track action.

Rothmans Porsche 953

Another Rothmans-liveried racer, this 953 rally car is a heavily-modified 911 variant built to survive the punishing 1984 Paris-Dakar Rally. It used a manually controlled four-wheel drive system to cope with tough terrain, with a 300bhp 6-cylinder engine providing the grunt. Three were entered to the rally, and one took overall first place, but the model was short-lived: the next year it was replaced by the 959.

Porsche 911 GT1 Evo Mobil 1

After suffering defeats in the new FIA GT Championship to the McLaren F1 GTR and Mercedes' CLK-GTR, Porsche responded in time for the 1996 season with this - the GT1 Evo. It had the same 592 horsepower turbocharged engine as the outgoing 911 GT1, but a new aero package made it substantially quicker to accelerate along Le Mans' famous Mulsanne straight. Race reliability was an issue, though - and it would be another year before Porsche would beat its biggest rivals to a first place finish.

Pink Pig livery

This Manthey Racing 911 RSR raced at this year's Le Mans in retro-inspired 'Pink Pig' livery, as homage to the widebody Porsche 917/20 that took part in the 1971 race. Entry #92, whose pink colour scheme segments the car into different cuts of pork along its flanks, was driven by the team of Michael Christensen, Kevin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor. The team took victory in the GTE-Pro class, and the car is seen here with race battle damage very much intact.

Esmee Hawkey's Carrera Cup car

Carrera Cup driver Esmee Hawkey credits her ninth birthday karting session for getting her started in motor racing. After driving a Cayman GT4 in the last two seasons of the GT Cup, 2018 saw her make the switch to a GT3 Cup car - and she got the chance to take it on the iconic Goodwood hill climb course for this year's Festival.

70 years of Porsche

Goodwood house was decked out in Porsche banners for a procession of iconic Porsche motor racing icons during the first day of the Festival of Speed.

Porsche GT2 RS takes to the hill

With a turbocharged engine sending all its power to the rear wheels, the 911 GT2 RS is perhaps the most ballistic road-going Porsche available today. The GT3 RS is practically refined by comparision, making this a bit more of a brute to drive.

Burnouts in a Gt3 RS

The Festival of Speed might be a hill climb, but with an empty stretch of tarmac and thousands of eager onlookers, can you really blame a driver for lighting up the rear tyres and filling the Goodwood estate with smoke?

Classics on track

With classic Porsches appreciating in value so rapidly they outpace stocks and shares as the best way to invest your money, owners could be tempted to seal their cars away and not let them see the light of day. That's why it's so refreshing to see classics used for what they were intended at events like the Festival of Speed.

Porsche 919 Evo

After demolishing the outright Nurburgring lap record with a time of just 5:19:55, you might expect Porsche Motorsport to be chomping at the bit to take down the Goodwood Hill Climb as well. That's not the case, with the marque just happy to let fans see the record-setting machine - leaving VW's impressive Pikes Peak winning ID.R to fight it out over the weekend.