The club itself has history worth knowing. The Goodwood Road Racing Club was founded in September 1998 alongside the first Goodwood Revival, growing out of a supporters’ group that had spent years lobbying to bring motor racing back to the Sussex circuit. Nearly three decades later, membership is still the mechanism that gets you into the Revival, the Members’ Meeting and the Festival of Speed. The America chapter borrows that same model rather than reinventing it: Founding Membership opens in early 2027, based first in California and Nevada, with reciprocal access to the UK club’s own calendar. The bigger commitment is a flagship event at Willow Springs Raceway in 2028 — Goodwood’s first headline event staged outside Britain in the club’s history.
That business is Legacy Motor Club. Richard Petty Motorsports sold a majority stake to Maury Gallagher in late 2021, and the merged operation ran for a year as Petty GMS before Johnson joined the ownership group in November 2022. The team rebranded as Legacy Motor Club in January 2023, with the No. 43 Chevrolet carrying forward the number Petty made famous and Petty staying on as the organization’s ambassador. Johnson’s stake grew from there: in January 2025 he became majority owner through a partnership with Knighthead Capital Management, as founder Maury Gallagher shifted into an ambassador role of his own. So when Goodwood lists four separate legendary motorsport figures, two of them already sit on the same masthead. Johnson signs the checks. Petty’s number is still on the fender.
It’s a useful reminder of how small the ownership circle in American motorsport actually is, and how much heritage marketing now runs through it. Legacy Motor Club is mid-expansion itself, moving to a three-car lineup for 2027 built around Josh Berry, Noah Gragson and a data-driven third entry the team stood up before it even named a driver for it. A Goodwood patronage doesn’t just flatter Johnson personally; it hands a team still building out its infrastructure a stamp of international, old-money credibility that money alone can’t easily buy — the kind of association that plays well with sponsors deciding where to put sports-marketing dollars next.
There’s a second layer of irony in Johnson specifically being the one draped in car-culture nostalgia. His entire NASCAR identity was built on the No. 48 at Hendrick Motorsports — five straight championships from 2006 through 2010 and 83 career Cup wins that put him in the Hall of Fame. Hendrick handed that same number to 20-year-old Connor Zilisch two years before he’s even scheduled to drive it, betting on a rookie’s long-term upside the way it once bet on Johnson’s. Johnson has effectively swapped roles: from the driver whose number became shorthand for an era, to the owner and ambassador figure other people’s numbers now get built around.
Willow Springs is not a random choice for the flagship event, either. Opened in 1953 and marketed for decades as “The Fastest Road in the West,” it’s one of the oldest continuously operating road courses in the United States — a Mojave-adjacent track with the kind of unglamorous, purist racing history that fits Goodwood’s brand of curated nostalgia better than a modern purpose-built facility would. Pairing that venue with Stewart, Andretti, Petty and Johnson covers Formula 1, IndyCar and NASCAR in one photo, which is presumably the point: Goodwood is selling the idea that American car culture is one culture, not three separate fan bases that don’t talk to each other.
What to watch between now and launch: whether Goodwood adds a fifth patron before Founding Membership opens in early 2027, how the club prices access for an American market that doesn’t have Britain’s century of aristocratic motorsport tradition to lean on, and whether Legacy Motor Club leans on the Goodwood association in its own sponsorship pitches as it finalizes that three-car 2027 lineup. The Willow Springs event in 2028 is still two years out, but the patron roster announced this week is really a preview of who Goodwood wants standing at the gate when it gets there.
About the Author
