Legendary cars and drivers on film for Adelaide Motorsport Festival

If the calendar's looking forlorn for the first weekend in December, why not pop across to Adelaide for the 2018 running of the Adelaide Motorsport Festival?

This year's event features up to 13 cars from F1 history, plus a couple of Porsche endurance cars, a WRC Subaru and special interest activities including

Event organisers have produced a short film, 'Race to the City 2018', a sequel to last year's promotional video, which pitted John Bowe in a Group C Holden Torana A9X and Troy Bayliss on a Ducati Superbike against three Supercar drivers in historic F1 cars in a race through the streets of Adelaide. Around 2.5 million viewers watched that video, according to the producers.

This year, the video stars F1 drivers from the 1980s, Ivan Capelli and Pierluigi Martini, along with Supercar drivers Craig Lowndes and Tim Slade, plus British Rally Champion Alister McRae and Le Mans winner David Brabham. The drivers running in a LaFerrari, a rally-prepared Mitsubishi Evo, a Brabham BT62 in its public debut in Australia, and a Ferrari F1 car.

South Australian backdrops for the film include The Bend Motorsport Park and the South Road Superway, with the cars also shot on public roads running through the Adelaide Hills, the central business district and the Islington rail freight terminal.

“The Adelaide Motorsport Festival itself is a huge success because we bring something new to the event every year,” said event director Tim Possingham.

“The same can be said for our short film. This will be an annual occurrence and year on year we will attempt to change the film so that it is fresh and new but remains relevant. Our strategy this year was to reach out globally with the film, give it an international flavour and appeal in terms of location and those featured in the film. It’s a hard ask on a shockingly tiny budget but I think we have done well.”

The film is simply a foretaste of all the action at this year's festival. Other highlights include a showcase of three hybrid hyper cars – the McLaren P1, Porsche 918 and La Ferrari – on track and in a static display. For the track component on both days of the weekend, Lowndes will drive the LaFerrari, Jim Richards will get behind the wheel of the 918 and John Bowe will take charge of the P1.

In an exciting test of wings versus wheels, the organisers have arranged for talented Red Bull Air Race flyer Matt Hall to match his skills and his single-seat MXS-R aircraft against a brace of racing drivers and high-performance competition cars. The drivers are Ivan Capelli in a 1989 March F1 car, David Brabham in a Brabham BT62 and Jim Richard in a Porsche 911 GT2 RS for an event named 'Winged Warriors'.

Celebrating Porsche's 70th anniversary in 2018, the Adelaide Motorsport Festival has booked two examples of the Porsche 962 sports car. Both will run a closed course Adelaide streets after appearing in the 'Peak Hour of Power' – a procession of around 20 high-performance cars taking place in the evening of Friday, November 30.

Among the drivers participating will be Alister McRae, behind the wheel of an original Group A Subaru Impreza WRC from 1993. McRae and the Impreza will make an encore appearance at the Rally Legends show on Sunday, December 2.

In addition to the Le Mans cars and McRae's Subaru, the Festival will pay tribute to F1 cars, with 13 of them making an appearance over the weekend, including the championship-winning 1959 Cooper driven by Sir Jack Brabham and three others from the 1950s.

The Festival's Stars and Great Cars web page provides information concerning the other highlights, and tickets can be purchased online for the event.