Adelaide Motorsport Festival returns to parklands in Mad March 2023
Historic F1 racing cars will roar through Adelaide’s parklands again in Mad March at an event billed as rivalling a world-renowned speed festival in the UK.
SA News
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Plans to revive the Adelaide Motorsport Festival in November have been ditched and the event – billed as a rival for the world-renowned Goodwood speed festival in the UK – now is slated for next March.
Labor vowed to return the motorsport festival as an election promise and organisers this March revealed the event had been scheduled for November 23-27 in the Adelaide parklands.
But Premier Peter Malinauskas now says the festival will be held between March 24-26 next year, a week before Melbourne’s Australian Formula One Grand Prix.
Event organisers predict Formula One team members will attend the festival before moving on to Melbourne.
Featuring exotic, rare and historic Formula One cars, the festival will centre on Victoria Park’s motorsport track.
Mr Malinauskas said $1.4m per year had been allocated to expand the event, particularly to attract more international and interstate visitors.
“We want the Adelaide Motorsport Festival to rival the UK’s world-renowned motorsport festival, the Goodwood,” he said.
“Moving the event to late March means we can target Formula One fans to visit Adelaide ahead of the Australian Grand Prix, which will be held on the following weekend.”
The event was cancelled in 2019 after the Liberal state government pulled funding for the festival’s Victoria Park Sprint of rare and classic vehicles.
The festival started in 2014, and rapidly grew over the years attracting crowds of 50,000 and international attention.
It is not known whether the Adelaide 500’s return from December 1-4 contributed to the festival’s switch from November to March.
Event director Tim Possingham said it would move to the next level by being staged in March, saying the schedule was “absolutely perfect for us”.
“The timing of our event has drawn significant international interest, whilst individuals who will be travelling from the Formula One events in the Middle East to Melbourne are compelled to arrive in Australia some four or five days earlier,” he said.
“They will be arriving in Adelaide and move on to the Melbourne Grand Prix after the Adelaide Motorsport Festival.”
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