| Out & About |
CARFEST
WORDS: DR OCTANE
PHOTOS: MPA CREATIVE & NEILL S MITCHELL
W
ell, the summer’s finally over: the blackberries are
out, the wasps are getting sluggish and mums across
the UK are high-fiving each other as their needy
broods slope back to school. Looking back on what
was a fabulous, and rare, British summer the highlight for me
has to be a weekend’s camping in the grounds of Jody Sheckter’s
dairy farm at CarFest South down in rural Hampshire.
CarFest’s omnipresent master of ceremonies was, of course,
BBC Radio 2’s ginger-haired bon vivant, Chris Evans; his
brainchild was for a family-friendly 20,000 person get-together
with a “village fete” feel, which celebrated his three main
passions in life: live music. fabulous cars and home-cooked
grub.
Headline music acts from Texas, Amy McDonald, The Jools
Holland Band and surprise special-guest (especially to him - he
got abducted by Evans after his Breakfast Show!) Sea Sick Steve,
got everyone on their feet. For me, the slightly drunken daddancing to 70s super-yokels, The Wurzels, just outside the beer
tents, summed up the laid back feel of CarFest.
Each morning the slightly hungover car lovers were treated
to the sights, sounds and smells of some of the world’s most
fabulous sports cars. In addition to Evan’s menagerie of fine
fezzas, Nick Mason sprinted his Ferrari 250 GTO and Jaguar
D-type up Sheckter’s improvised hill climb course, as did TV chef
James Martin in his Monte-winning Mini Cooper S. The birthday
boys, Lamborghini and Aston Martin (who, this year, turned 50
and 100 respectively), were also there in force.
Then it was the turn of the competition cars featuring a
selection of the iconic Gulf liveried machines, from the ROFCO
Collection topped by the legendary Porsche 917 as driven by
Steve McQueen in the movie Le Mans. CarFest South’s host,
Jodie Sheckter, also threw open his toy box this year: first
showboating his six-wheeled Tyrell P34 up the course (the
car in which he won the Swedish GP in 1976) before wowing
the sell-out crowds with blasts in his gorgeous sounding V12
Ferrari 312 T4 – the blood-red machine in which he won the
1979 F1 World Championship title.
50 | MotorPunk October 2013