F1 stars in their cars head to Adelaide in what is being billed as a Goodwood in the Southern Hemisphere.
Stefan Johansson, Ivan Capelli and Pier Luigi Martini, some big names from Adelaide’s Golden Era of Formula 1 will once again grace the Victoria Park Tarmac as part of the 2016 Adelaide Motorsport Festival on November 17-20.
“Last year the Adelaide Motorsport Festival pulled in around 20,000 spectators at its inaugural year under the current format. Crowds were blown away by the sheer number of people, cars and the quality of the vehicles at the event, with organisers pulling in Genuine Ayrton Senna F1 Cars from Switzerland amongst the 13 odd F1 cars on track,” explains Tim Possingham – one of the driving forces behind the event.
“Come November you can expect to see Stefan drive the Ferrari F1 car he drove in Adelaide in 1985 on the same tarmac he drove it on 31 years ago. These cars are extraordinarily rare and needless to say – priceless. So it’s been a mammoth task to source the car Stefan drove, bring that in and also Stefan himself to pilot it,” he adds.
“We have also paired Italian driver Ivan Capelli with the actual Leyton House March Formula 1 car he drove in Adelaide in 1989 and Pier Luigi Martini will be driving the Minardi F1 car he qualified third in the Adelaide Grand Prix in 1989 as well. The theme for this year’s event is Stars in their Cars and it has been important to us to source cars and drivers with a history in Adelaide.”
The festival will boast seven ‘Adelaide Era’ Formula One machines on a track which is a shortened version of the existing Clipsal 500 circuit confined to within Victoria Park.
If you’re more of a nostalgic Touring Car fan you will be happy to hear that there are thirty Historic Touring Car teams set to take to the track as well, many emblazoned with names such as Brock, Bowe, Richards and Longhurst from the 1970s through to 1995. In all there will be over 230 cars on track over the weekend.
“The event is expansive and we can’t think of anything in Australia that rivals this in terms of the number of cars involved, the rarity of some of the cars and the mammoth crowd it attracts,” says Possingham.”
It simply doesn’t stop with the 230 cars taking part in the Victoria Park Sprint element of the festival as there are also 150 competing cars in the Classic Adelaide Rally that are also on-site during the weekend as that section of the event takes to the Adelaide Hills each day for 21 closed road stages of Tarmac Rallying.
Just in case you didn’t get a chance to see the cars in action out on closed road stages, the organisers have brought them back into the city for the two final special stages under lights before the Champage starts spraying at 9.00pm as the Classic Adelaide Rally comes to a Finale.
Cars to look out for here are the Genuine Jimmy McRae Rothmans MG Metro Group B Car, the superbly built Audi S1 Quattro Group B Replica or any of the F1 drivers attending in just-released exotics, including Vern Schuppan driving the new Aston Martin DB1.
The Victoria Park hub for this event also features hundreds of display cars, a food and Wine Zone licenced for over 1000 people and a host of other activities. If you are travelling from interstate, arrive before Friday 5:30pm, you can watch police escort 3 F1 cars straight through the centre of the city in peak hour.