The day Heidfeld tamed the hill

Perhaps it didn't mean much to a young man with his focus firmly set on reaching the Formula 1 grid. Not at the time at least.

Yet 15 years on, Nick Heidfeld is proud of a performance that gave him - for the moment at least - a little place in motorsport folklore, even if it did only take him 41.60 seconds.

Heidfeld, then on the way to clinching his Formula 3000 crown, has fond memories of the day he set the outright course record on the 1.16-mile Goodwood hill at the Festival of Speed in 1999. He couldn't really forget it.

His dart up Lord March's front drive at an average speed of 100.39mph aboard an ex-Mika Hakkinen McLaren-Mercedes MP4-13 is there for all to see on YouTube.

"It really didn't seem so special when I did it, but it's great that the fans have taken so much pleasure from it," says the German, now two and a half seasons out of F1 and a fixture in the World Endurance Championship paddock with the Rebellion Racing LMP1 team. "Looking back, it's a nice thing to have done."

Heidfeld has to concede on the evidence of that YouTube clip that he was trying on his final run up the hill in June 1999: "The car looks so twitchy and I look really focused on keeping it on the road."

There's a story that then-McLaren F1 boss Martin Whitmarsh leaned into the cockpit on the startline and told Heidfeld to make sure he ended up quickest. It's a tale that Heidfeld doesn't recall, but he admits that honour was at stake.

"We weren't quickest and we didn't like that, of course," he recalls. "It had been quite a wet weekend and you need quite a few runs to learn the course and go quickly. I did push. I tried to go quickly without being stupid. I always left a margin.

"Out of some corners, I'd think that I was only maybe five per cent from the limit. At a slow corner like Turn 2, where you can see the entry and the exit, it was quite easy to be close to the maximum, but in the quicker corners I was maybe only at 80 per cent. It was very hard to know where the limit was because of the weather."

Crucial to Heidfeld's record run was the use of tyre heaters that year.

"That made a big difference," he explains. "F1 tyres work only when they are hot, of course, and that year I had good grip straight away. The big thing was getting the brakes up to temperature, which made the first corner quite exciting."

Heidfeld's record-breaking run, which lopped nearly four seconds off the previous mark, remains unsurpassed to this day, even if Allan McNish did go a smidgen quicker in 2002 at the wheel of that year's Toyota F1 car.

McNish unofficially beat Heidfeld's record time in 2002 © LAT

Contemporary F1 cars have not been part of the competitive element of the Festival of Speed since '99, a collective decision made by the teams who bring the cars. That means McNish's 41.57s remains unofficial.

Heidfeld has also gone quicker than his 1999 run, though only across the finish line. He returned to the hill in 2010 to drive an F1 Mercedes MGP W01 and hit 155mph at the end of his run.

"That sounds crazy, doesn't it?" he recalls.

"Most of the guys [in modern F1 machinery] were accelerating and slowing down, then doing burn-outs, but I thought I would push a little bit to give the spectators something else.

"We didn't have tyre warmers that year - I think we might have even run on wets - and I didn't push as hard as I did in '99, but my top speed was definitely quicker across the finish line."

HISTORY OF THE HILL RECORD

When Willie Green ran a Lotus-Climax 18 up the hill quicker than anybody in June 1993, he set the benchmark. By dint of this being the first Festival, he held the record. But not for long.

A year later, modern-day Formula 1 machinery lined up at the start. In an instant, Martin Brundle lopped 10 seconds off Green's time of 57.59s. Driving a McLaren-Peugeot MP4/9, Brundle reckoned there was more to come.

"We actually ran the car very conservatively," he said at the time, "If we'd swapped the hard tyres for something a little softer, I think you'd go up there in 42s."

For now, 47.80s would have to do. But for the next two years, Jonathan Palmer would raise the bar and lower the record. In 1995, Palmer fired the six-wheeled Williams-Cosworth FW08B from start to finish in 46.06s and, 12 months on, he bettered that with the older FW07B by 0.69s. And that was where the record sat for three years.

Justin Law's Jaguar XJR8/9 © LAT

Then came Heidfeld moving the record to another level, before a gentlemen's agreement followed between F1 teams for the event to be nothing more than demonstrations for the world's fastest racecars.

That wouldn't stop privateers and manufacturers outside F1. Every Goodwood Sunday afternoon, the finest and fastest would line up for one-shot glory. Justin Law's gorgeous Jaguar XJR8/9 is regularly rapid, but it's Graeme Wight Jr who has came closest to Heidfeld. In 2003, he set a time of 42.95s in a Gould-Cosworth GR51. Second-fastest time ever, but still a whopping 1.35s off the record.

Much was expected of Gregory Guilvert in the car Sebastien Loeb will be driving this week, but Peugeot's strict instructions not to bend the 208 T16 Pikes Peak ensured the firm's GT racer-turned-test driver would 'only' manage 45.86s.

TOP 10 GOODWOOD TIMES SO FAR

 1. Nick Heidfeld (McLaren-Mercedes MP4-13)      41.60s
 2. Graeme Wight Jr (Gould-Cosworth GR51)        42.95s
 3. Justin Law (Jaguar XJR8/9)                   44.19s
 4. Justin Law (Jaguar XJR8/9)                   44.40s
 5. Anthony Reid (Williams-Cosworth FW07B)       44.58s
 6. Gary Ward (Leyton House-Judd CG901B)         44.64s
 7. Martin Stretton (Tyrrell-Cosworth P34)       45.05s
 8. Rod Millen (Toyota Tacoma)                   45.08s
 9. Jonathan Palmer (Williams-Cosworth FW07B)    45.37s
10. Roger Wills (Williams-Cosworth FW05)         45.81s

WILL LOEB GO FOR THE RECORD?

The record, it seems, is safe for another year. That's the story according to Sebastien Loeb. Peugeot Sport director Bruno Famin's sitting on the fence. Lord March reckons it's doable.

Will he? Won't he? We'll see on Sunday.

If the sun's shining and the scene set, you never know what can happen when man and machine find a sweet spot. Especially when the man is nine-time World Rally champion-turned WTCC race-winner Loeb and the machine is Peugeot's extraordinary 208 T16 Pikes Peak.

With 875bhp behind him and just 875kg around him, Loeb must be tempted to give it a bit of a poke?

"That's not the idea," he smiles. "Normally it's not possible to do the record with this car. For me, it's a demonstration."

Will Loeb go for the record in Peugeot's beast?

Famin? "It's up to Sebastien," says the boss. "If he feels good after some early runs then... we'll see. The story that he was going for the record came from Lord March. The record is at a very high level and we're coming because it's nice to come to such a big event and show off our car."

Certainly, Loeb didn't need much persuading to get back in the machine he used to captivate Colorado last year.

"It wasn't difficult to convince me," he says. "This is a very special car, very different from the other ones I have driven. It's nice to have the opportunity to drive it again."

Since smashing the Pikes Peak record 12 months ago, Loeb's only done a short test at Le Castellet and three laps of the Red Bull Ring with the world's most exclusive 208. And he's not exactly a regular at the Festival either. He's been before, but can't remember when.

"I don't know the road," he says, happily accepting a plan of the hillclimb route. "Ah, yes. He [Gregory Guilvert, Peugeot tester] was four seconds off the record in one mile..."

Loeb's voice trails away, indicating the subject is closed. No records will be won on Sunday.

But don't forget, this is the same Alsatian who won 78 WRC rounds and nine world titles straight. Goodwood? A walk in the park...