Valtteri Bottas will get a rare slice of Ferrari history under his right foot next month, taking the wheel of a 156/85 at the Adelaide Motorsport Festival as the city warms up for the Australian Grand Prix.
Fresh from rejoining Mercedes in a reserve role for 2025 and with his Cadillac F1 comeback locked in for 2026, Bottas is set for a very different kind of Sunday drive. He’ll demo Michele Alboreto’s #27 Ferrari at 1:45pm on March 1 around the Victoria Park section of Adelaide’s former Grand Prix circuit—where Formula 1 first thundered into town back in 1985. Before that, he’ll get properly Antipodean with a blast in a V8 big-block Holden HQ Monaro in the morning. Bring earplugs.
If you’re picturing the scarlet Ferrari of the mid-’80s, you’re hearing it already: the 156/85, Ferrari’s ’85 challenger, delivered two wins and eight further podiums in the hands of Alboreto and Stefan Johansson, and wore the iconic #27 that still gives tifosi goosebumps. That Adelaide vintage matters too—’85 was the first time F1 hit the streets here for a season finale, before the circus decamped to Melbourne’s Albert Park from 1996.
There’s a neat throughline to Bottas’ next act, too. Cadillac will enter Formula 1 in 2026 as a Ferrari power unit customer for its first two seasons, and Bottas will spearhead the programme alongside Sergio Perez. Zhou Guanyu has already been confirmed as reserve. So a Ferrari from the turbo era as a warm-up lap? Not the worst kind of foreshadowing.
For Bottas, it’s also a lap of his adopted backyard. He’s spent increasing amounts of time in South Australia in recent years with partner Tiffany Cromwell, co-founding the RADL GRVL cycling event and, most recently, buying a vineyard about 45 minutes south of Adelaide. He’ll be meeting fans across the festival weekend, which runs February 28 to March 1 and traditionally serves as the appetiser to the Grand Prix.
The Adelaide Motorsport Festival is less about lap times and more about the noise, the nostalgia and the kind of machinery you’d never otherwise see moving in anger. In that sense, Bottas hopping between a bellowing Aussie muscle car and a shrieking mid-’80s Ferrari is pitch-perfect programming. For a driver who’s spent the winter blending simulator mileage at Brackley with long rides in the Adelaide Hills, it’s also a reminder of what comes next: a year in reserve, then straight back into the front line with a brand-new team and a new ruleset.
There’s a romanticism to the #27 Ferrari carving through Adelaide again, even if it’s a demo run. The city’s F1 roots run deep and the festival has made a habit of pulling proper head-turners into the paddock. Slotting an active grand prix winner into one of Maranello’s greatest-looking machines? That’s how you pack a hill.
And if you’re keeping score on the symbolism, consider this: Bottas will be a Mercedes man on paper in 2025, a Cadillac driver in waiting for 2026, and, for one afternoon in March, a custodian of Ferrari folklore. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday.
