The village as a starting line. The Octane Tour, a charity road trip built around a love of high-performance cars, leaves Saint-Tropez and makes its way to the Auvergne, ending at Circuit de Charade on 1 November 2026.
The idea is straightforward, and rather well put together: a convoy of sports and prestige cars crosses France, mixing drivers, petrolheads and content creators in one rolling caravan. Road trip first, circuit day after. A stopover is scheduled at the Pôle Mécanique d'Alès on 29 October, before the final push into Auvergne.
At Charade, the day opens to the public. On the programme: track sessions, a vehicle exhibition, and passenger rides in exceptional cars. That last part is where things get interesting: all funds raised through those rides go directly to charitable associations. Motorsport as a means to something else. There are worse ideas.
For the village, there is something quietly fitting about this. Saint-Tropez spends its summers watching expensive machinery crawl along the waterfront for the crowd. Here, the cars actually go somewhere, deep into the volcanic heartland of France, with a cause packed alongside the luggage. Circuit de Charade, located in Saint-Genès-Champanelle in the Puy-de-Dôme, opens its gates on Sunday 1 November.
