Jody Scheckter
Jody Scheckter won the 1979 World Championship for Ferrari — a title the team would not win again for twenty-one years, until Michael Schumacher in 2000. After retiring, he walked away from motorsport almost entirely and built one of Britain's largest organic farms, an afterlife almost nobody who watched his wild early career would have predicted.
Jody Scheckter won the Formula 1 World Championship in 1979, driving for Ferrari, a title that would prove to be the team's last for more than two decades. Earlier in his career, he had built a reputation as one of the sport's more wild and aggressive young drivers, notably triggering one of the largest pile-ups in Formula 1 history as a rookie at the 1973 British Grand Prix, before maturing into the composed, tactically astute driver who delivered Ferrari's championship six years later.
After retiring from racing at the end of 1980, Scheckter largely stepped away from the sport's public life, a departure that surprised many given how prominent a figure he had been. He turned his attention instead to business ventures, including early driver-training technology, before making the decision that would define the rest of his working life: building Laverstoke Park Farm in Hampshire into one of Britain's largest and most ambitious organic farming operations.
The scale of Scheckter's commitment to farming — including raising a dedicated herd of water buffalo to produce genuine Italian-style mozzarella in the English countryside — reflected the same intensity that had once made him a World Champion. His son Tomas carried the family name back into professional racing in American open-wheel competition, while Jody himself became better known in later decades for rare-breed livestock and organic produce than for his championship-winning season at Ferrari.
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After stepping away from racing, Scheckter purchased a large estate in Hampshire and turned it into Laverstoke Park Farm, a genuinely large-scale organic farming operation raising rare-breed livestock and producing meat, cheese, and other produce to exacting standards. The scale of his commitment surprised many who remembered him purely as a racing driver — this was not a hobby farm but a serious agricultural business he built and ran with the same intensity he'd once applied to racing.
Among Laverstoke Park Farm's more unlikely products was authentic buffalo mozzarella, made from a dedicated herd of water buffalo Scheckter imported and raised specifically for the purpose — an unusual undertaking for the English countryside. The farm's produce won awards and was stocked by upmarket retailers, turning what might have been a retirement curiosity into a genuinely respected food business.
Tomas Scheckter went on to race in American open-wheel competition, including IndyCar, carrying the family's racing reputation into the following generation even as his father had largely stepped back from the sport himself. Jody remained supportive of his son's career while continuing to focus the majority of his own time and energy on the farm.
In just his fourth Grand Prix start, at the 1973 British Grand Prix, the young and aggressive Scheckter triggered a huge multi-car accident at the first corner that eliminated a large portion of the field. The incident cemented an early reputation for wild, occasionally reckless driving that took him years to fully shake, even as he matured into the calculated, championship-winning driver he became by the end of the decade.
Scheckter's 1979 title remains a significant marker in Ferrari's history: the team would not win another drivers' championship until Michael Schumacher in 2000, a 21-year gap that spanned some of the most difficult years in Ferrari's Formula 1 history. Scheckter has remained closely associated with that achievement, one of the last times the team combined dominant machinery with a driver able to convert it into a championship.
In the years following his retirement, before fully committing to farming, Scheckter was involved in developing driving simulation and training technology, applying his professional racing knowledge to a commercial venture aimed at driver education. It reflected a broader pattern in his post-racing life: a restless, business-minded energy that eventually found its most lasting expression in the ambitious scale of his farming operation.