Ferrari madness amid the mayhem

MELBOURNE’s F1 was fine but the real action will be next month at Sydney's Eastern Creek for Australia's first Ferrari racing day.

The beautiful red 1979 Ferrari 308 GTS.

LOOK, Top Gear in Sydney was OK, and the F1 around Lakeside Drive was fine, as long as you watched it on television, but the real metal action is going to be next month at Sydney's Eastern Creek for Australia's first Ferrari racing day.

It won't be quite as red as the Ferrari day in Silverstone next September when 1000 of Enzo's finest will turn up, but Sydney will actually have three times the fun with a whole three days of Italian madness. On Friday, we'll see Ferrari owners who haven't been on the track get some lessons around Eastern Creek, then head off to the Opera House for what's billed as a night of pure indulgence and entertainment.

On the Saturday, hundreds of Ferrari owners with serious hangovers will drive en masse across Sydney Harbour Bridge to the racetrack. Of course, immediately leaving the bridge they will get caught up with the bumper-to-bumper traffic caused by tired parents driving their children to weekend sport at least 300km from their homes. Eventually the prancing horse owners will turn up at Eastern Creek and inhale the wonderful smells of the local garbage dump. Immediately a glass of Veuve (prosecco too down market?) will appear. During Saturday and Sunday the second series of the Ferrari world cup, the 458 challenge, will be run along with a Ferrari F1 show. Lots of amateur Fezza drivers will try to avoid the wall and avoid running over the feet of pit crew and eating too much. Best of all, anyone can go and watch all this mayhem for about $90.

While physically very close to Eastern Creek, the Vukmirica family's Luddenham Raceway is spiritually one million kilometres away. One day Maria, Michael and son Simo were sitting watching Home and Away when Michael and Simo started talking about putting a racetrack on the back of their farm in Sydney's western suburbs. Now, I know you're thinking: here he goes again, he's just trotting out the plot from Field of Dreams, with a Serbian-Australian family replacing the Kinsellas. At least Ray Kinsella loved baseball. The Vukmiricas didn't know motor racing from toad racing, although they knew a lot about pizzas (they started the Pizza Grazia chain), property development and olives.

So with a lot of enthusiasm from Michael's late grandfather and none from a whole lot of people who said the project would never get off the ground, last week the builders started cutting the main 1.4 km track. To help cashflow, Simo, now a construction engineer, is also overseeing the building of a paintball area and a kart track.

At a time when our sport has become solely about money and entertainment, the Vukmirica family is doing us all a big favour.

You won't guess what car I am plugging this week. Clever you! Yes, it's a beautiful red 1979 Ferrari 308 GTS with 90,000km, owned by my friend Andrew Hodges. A three-owner car, it is one of 184 built in right-hand drive and one of very few delivered new to Australia, and you can own it for $120,000. There are very few guarantees in life but if you can't make money on this in over two years you aren't trying.

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