Photo: SRO / Dirk Bogaerts Photography
The FIA Motorsport Games are set to return in 2022 after a two-year hiatus, but for the moment there are no plans to add new single-seater categories.
After the success of the FIA GT Nations Cup in 2018, Stephane Ratel, head of the event-organising SRO Motorsports Group, created the multi-discipline games. In 2019 the inaugural edition was held at Vallelunga, with 49 participating nations.
Formula 4 was the sole single-seater element, and won by Andrea Rosso. The category will be part of the second edition at Paul Ricard, which was originally set for 2020 before being postponed by two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ratel said to Formula Scout the inaugural games were “really a success despite the weather, which was horrendous” and “everybody liked the concept, and now we decided to grow it and to make it as many categories as we can”.
Crosscar, rallying, regularity rallying and autocross join in 2022, while other disciplines expand to give out more medals.
“Of course we don’t have Formula 1, we don’t have LMP1, we don’t have the big categories, but we have all the categories where you have non-professional drivers racing.
“A bit like the Olympic Games, and we have now 18 different categories wanting to compete, and it’s looking that it’s going to be a good success,” Ratel explained.
Taking into account such comparisons, Formula Scout asked Ratel about his thoughts on having motorsport included in the Olympic Games, and whether his Motorsport Games were a first step towards that.
“I don’t know. There have never been any motorsports in the Olympics, but the concept is definitely to have the Olympic Games of motorsport. That’s the concept. I think maybe when one day we are fully electric, but it’s not for tomorrow.”
Motorsport did in fact appear in the 1900 and 1908 summer Olympiad, although the International Olympic Committee has never officially clarified whether it could be considered retrospectively as an ‘Olympic’ sport or not.
The first Motorsport Games had six medal-awarding competitions across six different motorsport disciplines, and the expanded second edition will grow to 18 competitions in 11 disciplines.
F4 remains the only single-seater competition for 2022, and Ratel said “the idea is to stay like that” in future games when asked if it would be joined by more powerful open-wheelers such as Formula Regional or Formula 3 in the future.
He went on to stress the idea of having a wider variety of disciplines and categories within them (such as LMP3 prototypes and GT3s in sportscars) appear in the games rather than similar ones.