Formula One champion Jody Scheckter back in South Africa

LUKE ALFRED

Whatever the result at the end of the final, it’s bad news for one party. Luckily for former Formula One (F1) world champion Jody, who turned 70 at the end of January, he has been on the winning side on both occasions. The bragging rights are his – for the time being anyway.

When asked who breaks the ice by speaking to the other party first, Scheckter replies jokingly, “Look, I’m not really sure, but that’s no different to how it is normally. Isn’t that what marriage is all about?”

Scheckter took an overnight flight from Heathrow on Monday night, arriving in Joburg on Tuesday morning to promote this weekend’s F1 Joburg Festival, a street race along Katherine Street in Sandton designed not only to give local fans a taste of what F1 is all about, but to showcase South Africa’s talents as a Grand Prix destination of the future.

“F1 have endorsed the street race in Sandton,” says Scheckter, a regular visitor to South African shores although he lives on a large organic farm near Overton in Hampshire, England. “And I have to say that they’re very keen on bringing Formula One to South Africa in the near future.

“I can’t really say any more about it at this stage, but hopefully we will be getting Grand Prix racing back in South Africa in the years to come. It’s our hope, and it’s the hope of the thousands of F1 fans across the country.”

When asked if the Joburg Festival was likely to become an annual event, Scheckter said he wasn’t entirely sure, but he did endorse the Kyalami circuit as a possible Grand Prix venue of the future, saying that he “used to love racing on it”.

He hasn’t, he says, driven on the new refurbished track, but says he hears “that it’s become a really lovely circuit”.

The Joburg Festival on Sunday afternoon will primarily showcase the talents of last season’s F1 runner-up, Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas, as well as those of F1 legend David Coulthard, in a live car run through the streets of the Sandton CBD.

Scheckter will make a later appearance in his 1979 F1 title-winning Ferrari, which he also hopes to drive in Kyalami the following day.

“Fans will have an opportunity to get up close and personal with the sport on Saturday afternoon. It’s a taste of what might happen in the years to come,” he says.

Scheckter won the third of his ten Grands Prix at Kyalami in 1975, and was a regular visitor to the early-season South African event across the 1970s. In so doing, he became not only a national hero but a beloved icon in the local Jewish community.

The year for which Scheckter is most famous was 1979, in which he won the F1 Championship with a season of remarkable driving consistency. The season opened in South America, with races in Brazil and Argentina, Scheckter featuring on the podium in neither race.

At Kyalami in the third Grand Prix of the season, he got among the points for the first time, finishing second, and from then on was able to harvest points at regular intervals, challenging the early-season leaders, Jacques Laffite, Patrick Depailler, and Argentine driver, Carlos Reutemann.

He had a glorious May, winning consecutive races in Belgium and Monaco. And in late July and August, he also prospered in the mid-summer heat. The former student of Selborne College in East London finished fourth in Germany, fourth in Austria, second behind Australian Alan Jones in the Netherlands, before winning the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

A week or two later, he won the Drivers’ Championship for the first time, with Ferrari also winning the Constructors’ Championship in an extremely reliable car, the very car that he will be driving on the weekend.

Cynics might look at all of this and say that the possibility of a South African Grand Prix is pie in the sky. It’s one of those hardy journalistic perennials, flowering every so often amidst a welter of enthusiasm and promises, only to die a death because of lack of sponsorship revenue months down the line.

This might be true, but you can’t accuse Scheckter of not putting his money where his mouth is. He spends as much time as he possibly can in South Africa, and has a home above Clifton beach. He also owns a farm in Somerset West, although he says that he’s probably going to put that up for sale shortly.

All in all, though, he remains more than an honorary South African, as passionate about the country and bringing a Grand Prix here as he always was.