Photo: R.F.E. de A.
Motorsport Games promoter SRO Motorsports Group has announced the third edition of the competition will take place in two years’ time in Valencia.
The Valencian autonomous community, along with the Spanish motorsport federation, has put its support behind hosting duties and the permanent Ricardo Tormo circuit that sits 13 miles west of the city of Valencia will be the main venue.
The event will, subject to approval from the World Motor Sport Council, take place in October on a weekend that does not clash with Formula 1.
SRO plans to host part of the games in the downtown area of the city, including competitive racing activities. That is around 3.8 miles west of the port area where F1’s European Grand Prix was held from 2008 to 2012.
The Ricardo Tormo track is perhaps best known, infamously, for the first of two Formula E races that were held there in 2021. A rule on energy usage during safety car periods led to many drivers running out of usable energy at the end of the E-Prix and meant there were only nine classified finishers.
During the 2000s the circuit was busy with junior single-seaters, holding one or two rounds of the Spanish Formula 3 championship every year from 2001 to 2011, being a mainstay on the Euro Open by Nissan schedule too from 1998 to 2005, when the series changed name to Formula Renault 3.5.
GP2 ran its 2006 season opener and ’07 season finale there, it was part of the International Formula Master schedule from 2007-’09, MotorSport Vision’s Formula 2 championship raced at Valencia in 2009 and ’10, the F3 Euro Series visited from ’10 to ’12, and GP3 turned up in 2013 after losing the street circuit from its schedule.
There was FR2.0 action at Valencia in 2000, ’04, ’05, ’08 & ’09, Auto GP raced there in 2001, ’08, ’09, ’11 & ’12, Formula Regional European Championship included the circuit in its revised 2021 calendar, and Spanish Formula 4 has been there every season bar one since launching in 2016.
SRO chief Stephane Ratel told Formula Scout that the idea is for F4 to remain the only single-seater category in the Motorsport Games when the next edition takes place in two years’ time.