Don’t you hate it when a plan doesn’t come to fruition?
Sometimes you can’t do anything about it, especially when those projects are as ambitious as preparing a venue to host a MotoGP World Championship circular for the first time.
Unfortunately for the FIM and Dorna, only one of the two new rounds scheduled in India will take place as planned, while the other in Kazakhstan will take place.
Of course, these things happen, but it must be said that the Sokol International Racecourse is not the first – nor the last – ambitious project that does not come to fruition, as the examples of the past demonstrate. . .
It’s fair to say that there was a combination of astonishment and confusion when Dorna announced that MotoGP would be coming to East Central Asia for the first time in 2023 with the inaugural Kazakhstan MotoGP.
While the addition of this vast, landlocked, natural gas-rich country to the calendar is not unforeseen in itself (it has been attempted for years), its timing, the year the entire world turned its back on Russia, Kazakhstan’s close ally, for waging war in Kazakhstan. Ukraine raised its eyebrows.
A nation that has been accused of “sport-washing” – it’ll host the Olympics in the next 20 years, mark my words – it’s no surprise Kazakhstan wants a slice of the motorsport action having watched neighbouring Azerbaijan earn worldwide attention for its F1 race in Baku.
There was even the logo of the new Sokol International Circuit in a position to serve as the venue. . . Well, I deserved to. Although the images looked flawless, FIM officials disagreed and it wasn’t up to the task. It was postponed until 2024, but based on past examples of events being delayed and then canceled, the omens don’t look good.
The farce that was the Circuit of Wales – which was supposed to become the new home of MotoGP in the UK – is a sorry tale that still elicits bitterness.
The concept of the Welsh Circuit was born out of another wonderful British farce: Donington Park’s failed attempt to secure the F1 British Grand Prix, which left him with a void contract, a high-profile slap in the face from F1, the loss of his MotoGP race and major monetary interests.
While Silverstone had stepped in to temporarily restart MotoGP after wasting (and then regaining) F1, plans were drawn up to take the game to the Welsh Valleys on a circuit with the new logo.
Despite the intervention of the Welsh Government, the task was wrong from the start. In fact, the UK’s rather poor track record of creating new venues (don’t forget Rockingham?) came up when many wondered if anyone would be susceptible to travelling to a rather isolated Ebbw Vale domain for an overseas event.
As such, after obtaining its construction permit and being added to the MotoGP calendar, CoW’s attempt to secure investment through taxpayers was cynically met with cynicism and ultimately denied.
Rumoured to be paying millions just to secure a provisional spot on the 2016 MotoGP calendar, with construction still yet to start, the project was finally shuttered in 2018.
What distinguishes Finland’s failed attempts to lure MotoGP to northern Europe from other examples here is that it even went so far as to organise an introductory verification consultation on the new KymiRing for teams.
The Finnish MotoGP was supposed to herald the nation’s first MotoGP event since the 1982 Grand Prix World Championship round at Imatra, a ‘circuit’ more akin to a road race and featuring a section going across train tracks…
Honestly, the reasons why the Finnish MotoGP, scheduled for 2020, might not come to fruition are a cocktail of bad planning and bad luck.
A new venue with the logo, the KymiRing (no relation to Raikkonen), was “completed” enough in 2019 to invite a handful of racers to check out the track for themselves. However, even under Dorna’s obligation to promote it in the race, the participants had a lukewarm (trans: disappointed) reaction and a list of recommendations was presented.
It would have been great if Finland’s harsh winters hadn’t cost him months of preparation for construction. Then COVID-19 put an end to the occasion anyway in 2020, and again in 2021.
Promoters were now wasting lavish sums of money on an unused site while waiting for the arrival of MotoGP. So when Russia, whose border is just a grenade shot from the Kuvola region, declared war on Ukraine, the 2022 circular also fell, causing the circuit to slide into administration.
After brief MotoGP World Championship races in the 1980s at the new Hungaroring, Hungary attempted to bring the sport back to its borders for 2009.
The narrow and winding Hungaroring circuit was deemed unsuitable, so a new logo facility was created on the shores of Lake Balaton, aptly named the Balatonring.
At a time when interest is growing in 250GP favourite and MotoGP top scorer Gabor Talmacsi, who is making a call for himself, the structure of the Balatonring has started well and indeed, but was not in condition for its initially planned date of 2009.
Postponed until 2010, the circuit was also not in good condition and the relaunched Hungarian MotoGP rested quietly some time later.
However, it continues to this day: the Balaton Park circuit, as it is now known, is nevertheless finished and its doors open to foreign motorcycle racing in 2024 with a circular on the WorldSBK calendar. So maybe, maybe after more than a decade. After all, the Hungarian MotoGP will be back.
Brazil has played a pivotal role in the history of MotoGP/500GP over the years, having occupied the season opener and end on other occasions at its Jacarepaguá venue in Rio de Janeiro.
This has resulted in attempts (see also below) to bring MotoGP back to the South American nation, with the most recent attempt proposing a return to Rio.
In fact, after the site where Jacarepaguá once stood was demolished in preparation for the 2016 Summer Olympics, a new Brazilian MotoGP circular was proposed at the privately funded Rio Motopark, which is lately under construction.
A venue that has been under construction since 2011 and has reached an agreement with Dorna to host MotoGP from 2022.
However, it ran into a minefield, literally, before construction began, when it emerged that the site had been used in the past by the military, raising concerns about artillery and unexploded ordnance buried underneath.
While organisers managed to clear that hurdle, it encountered another concerning the environment of the nearby Camboata Forest. As such, the project was put on hiatus in the hope of finding another suitable location.
Ahead of the Rio Motopark, plans have been drawn up for a new Brazilian MotoGP event to be held at the Autodromo Internacional Nelson Piquet.
Connoisseurs will recognize that this is Jacarepaguá’s official call, unless it – confusingly – refers to another circuit in the country’s capital, Brasilia.
Provisionally included on the 2014 MotoGP calendar, the existing venue was due to receive a major upgrade to bring it up to scratch, but after it failed to secure the necessary funding, it was shelved.
Bizarrely, given the many cancellations, re-scheduling and stillborn projects, MotoGP never once utilised its ‘reserve’ venue in Russia.
In fact, the little-known Igora Drive was a wonderful inclusion on the official reserve list for 2021 in what many saw as a crash for what would be Russia’s first MotoGP bike.
This is the third new motorsport venue built in Russia in the mid-2010s, after the Moscow International Circuit, which hosted WorldSBK for a time and away from Moscow, and the Sochi Autodrom for F1.
ItArray, however, reserved Igora Drive for MotoGP, in a resolution that would no doubt satisfy Dorna’s advertising bodies. However, after encountering frustrations from the promoters of the WorldSBK event in Moscow, questions were already raised even before the event was definitively abandoned in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.