Here’s The Story Of A Promising Race Track That Was Never Finished

Modern-day race tracks are all quite similar – characterless, with 90-degree corners and long straights. The Balatonring in Hungary wasn’t really like that. The proposed layout looked like a real mix of quick corners, slow hairpins and straights. It looked like quite a challenge.

Well, from the mock-ups anyway. The planned circuit, located close to the Balaton lake in Sávoly, was set to cost €80 million to construct and would have housed between 110,000 and 140,000 people.

In fact, before work had even started, the Balatonring secured the rights to host the MotoGP Hungarian Grand Prix in 2009. The first stone was put down on the 6 November 2008, 10 months prior to the scheduled MotoGP round, and Dorna Sports CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta said after his visit that the project was “very important for both them [the Hungarian government] and us”. He added that he was “sure” the track would be finished in time for the race.

By August construction work had tentatively been started, although only clearing and levelling the (already pretty flat) land. The financial crisis then hit, with economic problems, as well as a harsh winter, delaying construction of the circuit. The Hungarian MotoGP race was postponed to 2010, with organisers and circuit owners confident the layout would be done in time.

The project took another major hit when a loan to complete the work from the Hungarian Development Bank was refused, as they thought it was too risky. It was reported that the government was happy to cover the costs of the MotoGP round but not the building of the track.

On March 18 2010 the Hungarian Grand Prix MotoGP race was officially cancelled by FIM and replaced by Motorland Aragon in Spain. It was the last straw and construction work had hardly even got going, despite starting in November 2008. In total it racked up $16,000,000 worth of debt and by 2012 the track outline couldn’t even be seen due to weeds and grass.

Above is a Google Maps view of the track from 2016, where the track can now be seen once again. However, little progress looks to have been made. The land was even put up for auction, but to no success. The grounds are kept clean (which is good considering reports that it has also become an illegal landfill), in the optimistic hope that a new investor can be found.

It was in the middle of nowhere, but the track looked promising, the layout could have been very quick and produced some good racing. We may never find out its potential!