South African racers head to Formula Ford Festival

Ian Schofield

This 2017 event marks the 50th year of Formula Ford racing - and The Formula Ford Festival is a celebration of single-seater racing regarded as an annual highlight on the British Racing and Sports Car Club calendar, attracting entries from many countries.

"South Africa has a long history of single-seater racing and the Formula Ford championship here is an institution in the motorsport world that dates back to the late 1960s," says Ian Schofield of the Investchem Formula 1600 series. "As an internationally-represented motorsport series, we will be providing a reminder of how strong our local competition is - and how passionate South Africans are about racing."

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For the 2017 event, six local competitors will join Investchem Formula 1600 competitor Rick Morris (who lives in England). Included on this list is both of the newly-crowned national Investchem Formula 1600 champions for this year, Julian van der Watt (42 - Race Driver SA) and Ian Schofield (10 - Investchem). The other drivers are Andrew Schofield (7 - Investchem), Dean Venter (77 - Desco) and his father, Steve Venter who races in the Formula Ford Kent category and Alex Gillespie (50 - ERP Trucking Solutions).

Between the seven of them, they will tackle the 1.93km Indy circuit at Brands Hatch over the two-day festival before returning to South Africa for the final round of the Investchem Formula 1600 championship at Kyalami on Saturday, 4 November 2017.