2025 Adelaide Motorsport Festival

The Adelaide Motorsport Festival came to town again, a week before the Australian F1 race in Melbourne. Two very hot days were forecast, which could spell trouble for some of the cars, and no rain would fall on the Sunday morning like in the previous 2 years. Tim Possingham, the event organiser had done it again, attracting some new exciting cars to make the event bigger and better than the previous year! This premier motorsport event that is recognised as the “Goodwood of the Southern Hemisphere” uses a shortened version of the V8 Supercars track comprising the southern Victoria Park section and looping back via Wakefield Road.

Static displays and all the category cars parked in their respective areas provide the general public with a chance to get up close and personal with these dream cars and drivers. On the Saturday and Sunday celebrity drivers and personalities would entertain the spectators in the main marquee and also drive some of the signature cars, in some cases like Thierry Boutsen, their first time back on the streets of Adelaide since the grand prix days or regulars, Stefan Johansson and Valtteri Bottas.

The highlight of this year’s event was ultimately the two Pagani cars, one a Huayra R and a Zonda R. The Zonda R is a track-only hypercar. Only 15 versions were made by Pagani so Adelaide motorsport fans can count themselves extremely lucky to have seen these two cars. Supercars driver Craig Loundes would be the driver of the Huayra R. These two magnificent cars were joined in the Hypercar category by a Aston Martin Vulcan (Tony Quinn), Bugatti Bolide, Brabham BT62 (Supercars driver Tim Slade) and Rodin Sintura.

In the Le Man category, the highly popular Mazda 767B 4-rotor-engined Le Mans car (driven by Senji Hoshino) was back to scream its way around the circuit. However, the Pagani Huayra would give it a run for its money in the scream stakes! This Mazda was the forerunner to the more famous Mazda 787B that became the first Japanese car to win the 1991 Le Mans 24 Hours event. Also in the endurance race cars category was a Leyton House Porsche 962C, rare Schuppan Porsche 962C (1 of 5 built), Nissan R88C, Castrol Prosport LM3000, Argo JM19C (IMSA series), Lola T610 (IMSA) and the Australian built Kaditcha K583 Cosworth.

Formula 1 fans were in for a treat as usual. Kicking off 40 years since the Adelaide Grand Prix first ran was some commemorative laps by the Beatrice Haas Lola. This car was apparently the first car to run on the grand prix circuit all those years ago. New to the AMF was the Jaguar P34 Cosworth in its distinctive green livery, the quirky 6-wheeled Elf Tyrrell P34 Cosworth and the multi-coloured Benetton B190 Ford (possibly the favourite of many of the fans of the Benetton cars). Three Brabham cars (including the pink and blue BT60B Judd, the last Brabham GP car) joined 2 Arrows (A10B Megatron and A1B Cosworth) cars and the Lola Larrouse LC88.

The Touring Car Legends is always a very popular category featuring past Supercars and Holden and Ford giant killers such as the Nissan Skylines. Three flame-emitting examples were in the 2025 event. They were joined by 4 Ford Sierras (Andrew Miedecke cars) and a DTM (German Touring Cars) race winning Mercedes 190E driven by everyone’s part time Australian Valtteri Bottas.

Nine NASCAR cars had their own category, dominated by 7 Chevrolets in the 9 car category. The small Can-Am category fielded 4 cars, including the extremely weird Shadow cars, where anything goes, ie almost no rules (rumour has it the rules were only one page long!).

Other categories included the Exotics, GT Style, Porsche Rennsport, Heritage Touring Cars, Sports Prototypes, Motorbikes (Superbikes) and Drift to make up 14 separate categories with demonstrations as well.

The 2-day event culminated in the “Ten of the Best” category, the only timed group on the weekend, run as the last event on Sunday. Craig Loundes in the Pagani Huayra R would pip Tim Slade and the Brabham BT62 by one-hundredth of a second!

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