The authentic and timeless world of Ralph Lauren
November 2025
RL/Culture

Checkered Futures

Once a year, the legendary Festival of Speed at the U.K.'s Goodwood Revival turns the track over to kids and their vintage Austin J40s. First one to pedal their car across the finish line wins the coveted Settrington Cup
A September Saturday morning in southern England. Sunshine and showers. The funk of motor oil mingles with the musk of damp tweed. A tannoy announcement is drowned out by the pulse-quickening roar of powerful engines revving from the nearby paddock. With minutes to go until the green flag is waved, anticipation is mounting in the competitors for the 2025 Settrington Cup — the most hotly contested race at the prestigious Goodwood Revival Meeting. Final preparations are being made, tactics discussed, liquids ingested. (Coca-Cola is a popular choice.) You could cut the air with a plastic knife. Another clue to the distinctive profile of the drivers: “If you need to go for a wee,” shouts a marshal, “now’s your last chance.” Heavy rain pounding my umbrella, I make my way through the pack to steal a few words with the driver of car 17. Resplendent in her monogrammed Ralph Lauren overalls, Paloma Twyman is feeling confident. This is her second year contesting the Settrington Cup; she seems focussed, determined, and, given the conditions, commendably unfazed.
To witness 70 kids pedaling as fast as they can, knees pumping like pistons, is to witness English eccentricity at its most pronounced.
I wonder if she has any advice for newbie drivers? “Elbows out!” she says. Paloma Twyman is five years old. The invitation-only Settrington Cup, presented for the first time this year by Ralph Lauren, is a pedal car race for kids aged between four and ten. The sleek machines, like all the vehicles racing here today, are vintage: Austin J40s. In the 1950s these beautiful cars stood on the forecourts of Austin dealerships across Britain and were sold as an expensive toy for privileged enthusiasts — and their children. Now they change hands for as much as £5,000. ($6,800) I recognise a man in Aston Martin Racing overalls and a handsome cloth cap. This is Darren Turner, a decorated British driver, three-times winner of the Le Mans 24 Hours race, sadly very slightly too old to compete in this year’s Settrington. In his place, Darren’s son Dylan Turner is flying the family flag. This is Dylan’s fourth and, as a ten-year-old, his final attempt to lift the Cup. (Dylan is not the only progeny of a famous petrolhead to be competing today. In car 22: Hendrix Button, former F1 world champion Jenson Button’s son. In 194: Lenny Button, his daughter.) Darren tells me he found his J40 by chance, at a car museum in the Cayman Islands. When its owner died, his widow said Darren could have it. He brought it to England and had it fully restored. Bearings replaced, pedals greased, a splendid blue respray. The Settrington Cup, like all the races at Goodwood Revival, is run in a spirit of friendly competition. That doesn’t mean it’s not taken seriously. It doesn’t mean the teams aren’t desperate to win. “I think it’s more the parents, to be honest,” Darren tells me, with the raised eyebrow of a man who has encountered his fair share of back-seat drivers. Tactics? “It’s all about the start,” Darren says. “And then keeping out of trouble in the chicane.” As in life, so in motor racing.
FROM CAR SEAT TO DRIVER'S SEAT
This is the first year Ralph Lauren has sponsored the Settrington Cup, where fathers serve as the pit crew and “elbows out” is the strategy for winning.
Goodwood House is a seventeenth century stately home set in 11,000 acres of parkland just outside Chichester, Sussex, on England’s windswept south coast. It has been the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Richmond and Gordon for 300 years. It’s home to a world-class art collection; a famous racecourse, which hosts the Glorious Goodwood meeting; a golf course; and, since 1948 the Goodwood Motor Circuit, site of the annual Festival of Speed. Revival, a three-day festival held each September, is a celebration of the cars that would have driven the track in its early incarnation, between 1948 and 1966, when it fell silent for three decades. It’s also a celebration of the styles of that time. Many festivalgoers arrive in era-appropriate fancy dress. I see 1940s spivs and 1960s hippies, women in sensible skirt suits and even one hep cat in a zoot suit. The present Duke of Richmond, who inherited the title and the House in 1994, revived the motor circuit it in the late 1990s. To call him a racing enthusiast is to considerably undersell it. His Grace burns rubber for breakfast. Introduced in 2012, the Settrington Cup is his idea. “We just thought it would be wonderful and really fun to have a race for children,” says the Duke. “It’s become our most oversubscribed race! Lots of the drivers who come and race here now bring their children to compete alongside them in the Settrington Cup. It’s the most charming race of the whole weekend.” As for Revival as a whole, “There really is nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world. Staging the event in period creates a kind of magic — everyone wants to be a part of it. Wherever you look, people are just having a brilliant time.” He’s not wrong. To witness 70 kids pedalling as hard as they can, knees pumping like pistons, in front of a packed grandstand of high-spirited spectators in period costume is to witness English eccentricity at its most pronounced. It’s silly and funny and oddly moving. The race itself is over in a flash. And taking the chequered flag by some distance, a chip off the old block: Dylan Turner! “He was shaking with nerves before the race,” Dylan’s mum, Katie, tells me as the press pack swarms around her victorious son. “He knew it was his last chance.” Look out, Lewis Hamilton. This boy will go far. And fast.
Alex Bilmes is a writer and editor based in London. He is a contributing editor to the Financial Times’s HTSI and previously edited British Esquire.
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