FIA to Launch the ‘Olympic Games’ of Motorsport

On Friday 14th June, the World Motor Sport Council announced their plans for the ‘FIA Motorsport Games’ to be hosted in Italy at the end of this year.

The multidisciplinary sporting event will be organised similarly to the Olympics in that drivers will represent nations rather than their manufacturer, with Bronze, Silver and Gold medals awarded that will go towards an overall medal table for the home country.

Rome will host the event that will take place from Thursday 31st October to Sunday 3rd November. So far, no details on which circuit or arena that’ll be used have been announced.

Six categories have been announced so far, including;

• GT
• Touring Car
• Formula 4
• Drifting
• Karting
• Slalom
• Digital Motorsport

While more information is expected shortly, it is currently unknown whether the event will allow manufacturers or factory drivers or it’ll be more amateur focused as the 19th Century Olympic commitee envisioned.

GT racing already has a similar concept with the FIA GT Nation’s Cup. The inaugural event took place last December at the Bahrain International Circuit with Team Turkey taking the honours ahead of the British team. However, only the drivers were consistent with their respective nations, as the winning outfit; Ram Racing, are based in Northamptonshire, with both Ayhancan Güven and Salih Yoluç piloting a Mercedes-AMG. The weekend featured two qualifying races followed by a main race and was open only to Silver and Bronze rated driver, though whether the FIA Motorsport Games will adopt the same approach is yet to be seen.

The inclusion of Formula 4 cars could be a final answer to the F4 World Cup concept that was suggested a few years ago. The FIA has already announced an F4 Asia Pacific Cup at the end of 2019, in which the top drivers from the Chinese, Japanese, South East Asian and Australian series will travel to China. It is possible that the event could adopt a similar format to the FIA F3 World Cup in Macau.

No F1 is scheduled that weekend, though it will clash with MotoGP in Sepang and Super GT in Motegi.

All relevant Sporting Regulations were also approved at the meeting.