Entering the Simola Snake Pit

Carroll Shelby would have enjoyed it. In fact, as the tension mounted during the Simola Hillclimb’s final few hours, you could feel his larger-than-life hubris in the pitlane. I imagined him admiring the variety of Shelbys swarming in and out, peeking under the bonnets with silent approval and probably squeezing into the passenger seat for a shotgun ride up the 1,9 km hill, applying an invisible force holding down the accelerator.

The big Texan, who spent some of the 1970s in South Africa, was renowned for his recipes – big