Horseless to hybrid: Celebrating the search for horsepower at the Festival of Speed

So, the 'Horseless to Hybrid' theme at this year’s Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard is entirely poignant and might we say, couldn’t have been exemplified in greater style than with the lineup we’ve got.

Some context is required for what we’re about to show you because, without it, the temptation is to look at the likes of the Leyat Helica and the Salvesen Steam Wagonette and ask ‘but why?’ See, petrol combustion engines as we know them didn’t actually catch on wholesale in an instant at the dawn of the motoring age. We were experimenting with everything from electric power, to steam power, to even slapping a fan on the front of a car. That was the state of things from the 1890s really, until not long before World War I.

Of course, it didn’t take long for internal combustion to get some traction and there followed a good eight decades of innovation. From turbo and supercharging, to fuel injection, to multi-valve and multi-cam mills, with cylinders counts and the arrangements of them varying enormously. Everything improved at an exponential rate: efficiency, power output, rev limits, packaging, weight and so much more.

The pace of progress was unprecedented, as material science, manufacturering methods, and understanding of the science of speed and power advanced. We went from 28-litre aero-engined beasts with bucket-sized pistons good for just over 130mph in the 1910s (shout out to the Beast of Turin) to supercharged streamliners good for almost 260mph in the 1930s. By the 1980s, turbocharged Formula 1 cars were capable of producing over 1,500PS (110kW) in their most potent configurations.

There were moments there, where we investigated other forms of propulsion. We have in attendance, for instance, examples of turbine-powered racing cars motivated by thrust. There was also – albeit never really in existence, let alone present here – the American idea of a nuclear-powered car. Alas, none of it really caught on, with fossil fuels prevailing as the sole power proprietor into the 1990s. And then electrification began to creep back in.

Road cars began courting hybridisation in the 1990s, but within 20 years electric power was bleeding into motorsport and high-performance motoring. Today, more contemporary racing cars than not incorporate an electrified element in their powertrains, from F1 to Le Mans, to the WRC, to Touring cars and everything in-between. On the road, fully electric cars with their instant delivery and response are the new kings of the traffic light grand prix.

Contrary to what many naysayers would argue, our hobby is all the richer for the diversity of thought from its brightest minds when it comes to how we power our cars.

Our theme, if anything, is proof that the methodology of generating forward motion has always been in flux; that however dramatic this step of evolution we find ourselves in now feels, change really is nothing new. Let’s see where the people that are cleverer than most can take us and, more importantly, let’s see how fast we’ll be able to go once we get there…

The 2024 Goodwood Festival of Speed takes place from the 11th-14th July, and you can watch every moment of the action on our live stream right here on GRR!

Photography by Jordan Butters, Finlay Williams, Peter Summers and Nick Wilkinson