Field Of Dreams

Somewhere in South Australia is a Lost Grand Prix circuit. We went looking for it in Porsche's ultimate road racer.

- Dylan Campbell

IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA, you can walk where Jack Brabham once raced, swatting away flies and wondering where the hell you’ve just driven yourself to. A paddock near Port Wakefield, 100km north-west of Adelaide, could be any other as you drive past on the adjacent dirt road, the landscape flat, featureless and so dull, even grass struggles to take up permanent residence. Yet through the low saltbush in this expansive place with its big blue sky and distant horizons, the remnants of Australia’s first bitumen purpose-built car racing circuit can be found.

Having stepped over the low fence and walked into the paddock looking for the old 2km-long Port Wakefield grand prix circuit – trespassing, technically, given it’s private property – we find surviving portions of bitumen, slowly receding back into the earth. In the distance, the road on which we arrived is no longer visible, hidden below the knee-high arid scrub. But poking above it is the distinctive roofline of a 991 Porsche 911, in mercury silver, raking backwards to the most enormous rear wing you’ll ever see on a road car. It’s a 911 GT2 RS, and without being able to see the road it’s parked on, it looks like it’s just landed in the middle of the paddock from the sky itself. You couldn’t imagine a stranger place to see the fastest production car in the world, according to Nurburgring lap times anyway.