Being an F1 world champion comes with more than just eternalised racing glory. For Jody Scheckter, who won the 1979 Drivers’ Championship title driving for Ferrari, it provided him with the wealth required to launch a successful business, and gain ownership of a beautiful property worth £58million.
Scheckter won his F1 title in 1979 following a tense fight with Canadian racing legend Gilles Villeneuve and later founded the weapons simulation business, Firearms Trading Systems. With revenue of over £100m by the 1990s, the South African’s fortune ballooned, and he was able to purchase the unbelievable Laverstoke Park Farm property. Situated near Overton in Hampshire, the 530-acre property came into Scheckter’s possession in 1996. The F1 legend went on to develop the land, acquiring surrounding farms and establishing his own organic farming operation.
Over the course of his ownership of the property, Scheckter has even featured on TV documentaries, including the BBC’s hit Escape to the Country. However, in 2024 the property ceased dairy production and buffalo farming, and the former Ferrari F1 star is now looking to move on from his incredible real estate portfolio.
The Laverstoke Park is now for sale with Savills and Knight Frank looking for a total of £58m for the entire property, which comprises 17 different estate houses and cottages. Potential suitors can also bid for individual lots, starting at £8m.
While the price is eye-watering, the future purchaser will be getting bang for their buck. The staggering estate contains an indoor pool, indoor tennis courts and squash facilities, as well as 1.5 miles of fishing opportunities on the River Test. Then, there is the farmland, which remains arable.
Scheckter’s passion for organic farming is now being emulated by another F1 world champion, Sebastian Vettel, but the South African took his intrigue and turned it into a sustainable business on the Laverstoke Park Farm property.
“In the beginning, I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Scheckter admitted to Hampshire Life in 2019. “I started out doing it for myself and my family – a lot of it has come back to that. I’m proud that it’s now become profitable but I would have liked to have achieved that much earlier.”
He added: “The farm has changed dramatically from a farming point of view. Now the farm is much more of a dairy farm than anything with our buffalo milk. We do a lot of sheep and sell them like any other farm. We’ve become more of a normal farm now than we ever were.”