Autodrom Pomorze: a track for a rule that never took effect

On Friday 24 July 2015, at exactly noon, a ribbon was being cut on the edge of Pszczółki. It was held by the marshal of the Pomeranian Voivodeship Mieczysław Struk, deputy marshal Krzysztof Trawicki, member of the voivodeship board Ryszard Świlski, the director of the Pomeranian Road Traffic Centre Wiesława Kasprzewska-Charkin and the head of the commune Hanna Brejwo; invitations also went to the police and fire service commanders and to the president of the Polish Motor Association. They were opening a driving technique improvement centre worth 12.5 million zloty, built with a rule in mind that from January 2016 was to send every freshly minted driver onto a skid pad. The rule never came into force, and the kilometre loop of asphalt in Pszczółki began to live a life of its own: drifting, races of classic motorcycles, track days and a dispute with the neighbours that ended up before an administrative court.

Location	ul. Żuławska 5, Pszczółki, Gdańsk county, Pomeranian Voivodeship; south of Gdańsk, on the border of Pszczółki and Skowarcz
Type	driving technique improvement centre with a karting and road course, a dirt track and two skid pads
Track length	1047 m; width up to 10 m
Elevation difference	about 5 m
Site area	8 ha
Opening	24 July 2015; construction from 10 October 2014
Construction cost	12.5 million zloty, entirely from PORD's own funds
Owner and operator	Pomeranian Road Traffic Centre in Gdańsk, a unit subordinate to the Marshal's Office of the Pomeranian Voivodeship
Best track day time	41.83 s, Sebastian Matuszewski, Mitsubishi Lancer X, JDM Track Day, 10 September 2022 (an amateur time, not an official race record)
Most important events	rounds of the Polish Classic Motorcycle Racing Cup (2016–2017), Drift Open (since 2017), round five of the Polish Drifting Championship (2019), Pirelli Track Day (2026)
Status	open; closed on Sundays since 16 November 2025

Paperwork from 2012 and a foundation act

The history of this place begins with documents that six years later would come back as arguments in a dispute. In May 2012 the Regional Director for Environmental Protection in Gdańsk found that building a driving technique improvement centre in Pszczółki did not require an environmental impact assessment, and on 25 June 2012 the head of the commune issued a decision on environmental conditions, reasoning that the investment's impact would stay within the plot boundaries. In the project information sheet the investor recorded that the nearest residential buildings lay about 600 m from the site of the future centre.

The investor was the Pomeranian Road Traffic Centre in Gdańsk, the voivodeship institution that examines drivers, subordinate to the Marshal's Office. At the beginning of October 2014 a foundation act was laid on the eight hectare plot on ul. Żuławska; the ceremony was attended by member of the voivodeship board Ryszard Świlski, the Gdańsk county head Cezary Bieniasz-Krzywiec, commune head Hanna Brejwo and PORD director Wiesława Kasprzewska-Charkin. The centre gives 10 October 2014 as the official start date of construction. In the spring of 2015 the local press photographed the building site and learned at PORD that completing the investment "is still a matter of months". The whole thing cost 12.5 million zloty and, as Kasprzewska-Charkin stressed, was financed without outside support, from PORD's own funds.

The reason for building it was written into the law. The transport minister's regulation of 16 January 2013 on driving technique improvement assumed compulsory training for everyone who passed the category B examination, between the fourth and the eighth month after obtaining the licence. At the laying of the foundation act Kasprzewska-Charkin announced that "from January 2016 every freshly minted driver will have to go through an hour of training on a professional skills course". The head of the new centre, Roman Nowak, explained on the opening day how it was supposed to work: a two hour theory course at the voivodeship road traffic centre, then an hour of practice in Pszczółki, 300 zloty in total, because "prices are regulated from above". Pomerania had no such facility at the time; PORD advertised Autodrom Pomorze as the first professional driving technique improvement centre in the voivodeship and in the whole of northern Poland.

The obligation never came into effect. Five years after the opening the centre itself admitted in its anniversary statement that the rules under which it had been created had not entered into force. A track built for thousands of young drivers sent there by law had to find its customers on its own.

A kilometre of asphalt, two pads and a fireplace

The heart of the site is a loop 1047 m long, which the operator calls a karting and road course and the longest karting track in Pomerania. Even before the opening there was talk of traffic lights, a timing system and the option of shortening the configuration, and the fleet was being bought: ten go-karts of 9 hp, four quads and a tractor unit with a semi-trailer. The ribbon is up to 10 m wide and has about 5 m of elevation difference; a report from a motorcycle track day in 2026 describes it as technical, with tight and varied corners, where precision of line counts rather than power. Next to it lies a dirt track for quads, a rectangular skid pad 150 by 50 m, a ring shaped pad 68 m in diameter, a manoeuvring yard 100 by 20 m and a rise with a curve and watering; the office building has a lecture room for 20 people and a garage hall of 550 m².

In an interview from July 2015 Kasprzewska-Charkin boasted that the site was also to serve social gatherings and team building events, and that "a fireplace was even built there, which will provide a unique atmosphere after a day full of motorsport impressions". From 25 July 2015 the centre worked seven days a week, from 8 to 20; an hour with an instructor in your own car cost 200 zloty, eight minutes in a go-kart from 30 zloty. In under three months 300–400 drivers were trained, and on 11 October 2015 PORD and the commune invited residents to an open day with free go-kart rides, an exhibition of vintage motorcycles and "pea soup à la PORD". Crowds turned up.

Drifting, classics and a day in a go-kart

PORD itself later stressed that the track's dimensions do not allow races to be organised and that what takes place here is "training or competitions". The calendar, however, quickly filled with events whose noise carries further than the sound of exercises on the pad. Already in the 2016 season the newly created Polish Classic Motorcycle Racing Cup, in which motorcycles produced before the end of 1989 compete, scheduled two of its four rounds in Pszczółki, in May and in July. On a rainy Saturday in September 2017 the season finale was held here: 45 competitors in classes from Moped 100 through Classic 175 and 250 to Youngtimer 500; in the Classic 500 class Marcin Magdzik won on a 1972 Honda CB350 Four.

In August 2016, a year after the opening, the track hosted the eleventh edition of Moto Safety Day, with stunt shows by the Moto Circus group, drifting, a supermoto and pit bike race and monster trucks. In June 2017 round two of AMZ Drift Open took place here, billed as the absolute debut of league format drifting at the new facility near Gdańsk; tickets cost 15 and 25 zloty, and the event was hosted by Adam "Dasiek" Jugowski. A year later, on 2–3 June 2018, round two of Drift Open was won by Jakub Król ahead of Paweł Korpuliński and Marcin Carzasty. In August 2019 Pszczółki hosted round five of the Polish Drifting Championship.

The most peculiar event in the track's history was an attempt at a Guinness record. On 16 June 2017 at 18:00 the Tricity traveller Tomek Staniszewski set off in a go-kart with a homologated chassis and a four stroke KTM 125 engine, to cover more than 1361 km within twenty four hours, that is more than the record set in the United States in 2011. After twelve hours a fuel system failure robbed the engine of power and the attempt was stopped, although according to Roman Nowak the driver had a large cushion of laps at that point; the collection for a children's hospice in Gdynia carried on. At the end of August 2019 more than a hundred people came here for the Ducati Baltic Weekend, with track training run by Janusz Czaja's JC Group team and test rides of the Panigale V4.

Complaints, measurements and a resolution

Noise complaints started reaching the commune in October 2015, three months after the opening; they concerned above all weekends and public holidays. In July 2016 the county authority measured the noise and found no exceedance of the limits; a measurement in the spring of 2017 gave a similar result. Some of the residents organised themselves into the „Wspólnie dla Dobra Gminy” association. Its president Dariusz Majdańczuk claimed in March 2018 that the investor had misled the authorities about the distance to the nearest houses, and that the 2017 measurement made no sense, because the owner knew its date.

We stress that the centre itself does not bother us. What is unacceptable is the noise emitted by drifting cars. Originally the centre was to host training, there was no talk of competitions and races.

Commune head Hanna Brejwo admitted that drifting is "in fact a nuisance", but there was no evidence of the limits being exceeded; she asked the county head to oblige PORD to carry out an ecological review and hoped the problem would solve itself once compulsory training for young drivers filled the centre's calendar. PORD replied a week later: the centre organises no races, drifting competitions take place two or three times a year and are run by an outside organiser under a rental agreement, and Pszczółki lies by national road 91 and railway line 9, whose noise exceeds what "occasionally takes place at the Autodrom". PORD director Roman Nowak, since October 2017 the successor of Kasprzewska-Charkin at the head of the institution, added his own hypothesis to the statement: that the dispute has a political dimension ahead of the local elections, and that Majdańczuk is a former PORD employee with whom "a few years ago we had to end our cooperation".

The figures from the court records show the scale: in 2017 the track held 19 events, and 13 were planned for 2018. A measurement on 7 April 2018, during a mass event, gave a result indistinguishable from the acoustic background. But a measurement by the Voivodeship Inspectorate for Environmental Protection on 1 June 2018, taken during a training session, showed 52.3 and 53.7 dB at two points, that is 2.3 and 3.7 dB above the limit for residential development; on 19 June the inspector ordered emissions to be reduced to the permissible level. On the same day, 19 June 2018, the Pszczółki Commune Council adopted resolution no. XXXIX/358/18, which allowed racing, training, karting and dirt tracks and skid pads to be used only from Monday to Friday between 8 and 18.

For a facility that earned the most on Saturdays and Sundays, this meant the end of events. Nowak commented: "This resolution is the collapse of the mission of improving road safety", and announced that the centre was making no changes and still worked from Monday to Sunday. A petition in defence of the autodrom appeared online; in August 2018 it had more than 10,000 signatures, and 16,635 by the time it closed. Motorcycle portals wrote outright that the track might join the list of closed facilities in Poland.

Case number II SA/Gd 564/18

PORD challenged the resolution before the Voivodeship Administrative Court in Gdańsk. On 9 January 2019 a panel chaired by judge Dorota Jadwiszczok declared the resolution invalid in its entirety and ordered the commune to pay 797 zloty in costs. The court pointed out to the councillors that the provision they had invoked requires proof that the noise from a specific installation actually has a negative impact on the environment, while the commune had relied on a single measurement of 1 June 2018 with questionable methodology, taken during one training session, when other measurements had shown no exceedances. Residents' complaints alone, the court ruled, cannot justify such a finding. Nor was the resolution a general act, because the PORD track is the only such facility in the commune, and to fight the noise of a specific plant the law gives the authorities other tools: administrative decisions, not acts of local law.

"I received the court's decision with enormous joy and relief", said Nowak the day after the judgment. The ruling was not final at the time and the commune could appeal it to the Supreme Administrative Court. The centre continued to work at weekends too, and the judgment was discussed by "Rzeczpospolita" in its local government section.

Quick Race, Japanese cars and heat at Pirelli

In July 2020, for the centre's fifth birthday, PORD summed up the first five years: 2898 individual customers on driving technique courses, 3217 participants in the Safe Fleet programme, 6619 professional drivers of categories C and D, 138 candidates for driving technique instructor, 12,952 people in go-karts and 6364 rentals of the site or the track. In the spring of that year operations were suspended because of the pandemic; they resumed on 16 May 2020 in groups of up to six people, in masks and by appointment only. Nowak announced at the time: "We are not slowing down, quite the opposite, we are shifting into fifth gear".

Track days for amateurs have run here for years on a simple pattern. In October 2019 taking part cost 180 zloty, a category B licence and valid third party insurance were required, and before going out on track advice was given by the racing driver and instructor Maciej Pawelec. For several years JDM Track Day has been held here, a track meeting of Japanese brand cars: in May 2021 the fastest of the 48 participants was Piotr Sławiński in a Toyota GR Yaris with a time of 44.60 s, and 26 drivers went below 50 s; in the edition of 10 September 2022 Sebastian Matuszewski in a Mitsubishi Lancer X achieved 41.83 s. The centre's rules require tarpaulins to be laid under cars in the service lane to protect the surface from leaks. Today the basic way of driving your own car is Quick Race: a half hour session for 210 zloty, with a driving licence document and third party insurance, with one adult passenger at no extra charge. Motorcyclists rent the track for training sessions; in the 2025 season an hour cost from 800 zloty on working days to 1500 zloty at weekends, and training providers such as Robson Motosport divide participants into four speed groups and run six fifteen minute sessions. In May 2024 the centre introduced a Track Pass loyalty programme: nine stamps for track rental earn a free entry.

The 2026 season confirmed that Pszczółki had entered the calendar of nationwide motorcycle series. On 19 June the sixth Pirelli Track Day was held here, the first in northern Poland after editions in Modlin, Międzychód, Jastrzębie, Łódź and Biłgoraj; the guest was Daniel Blin of Automarket AF Racing Team, fresh from a double win in Brno in the EuroMoto series. It was about 30 degrees in the shade, and the asphalt heated up so much that both the tyres and the riders' fitness were put to the test. The next day, on the same track, Suzuki Moto Szkoła celebrated fifteen years of training, dividing participants into a beginner and an intermediate group. One thing has changed in the rhythm of this place, though: since 16 November 2025 the gate on Żuławska has been closed on Sundays, "until further notice", with no reason given.

Timeline

• May–June 2012: the Regional Director for Environmental Protection in Gdańsk and the head of Pszczółki commune issue the environmental documents for the planned driving technique improvement centre; the information sheet gives the distance from buildings as about 600 m
• October 2014: the foundation act is laid; the official start of construction on 10 October
• 24 July 2015: the ceremonial opening of Autodrom Pomorze; from 25 July it works seven days a week
• October 2015: the first noise complaints from residents; on 11 October an open day for residents
• 2016: two rounds of the Polish Classic Motorcycle Racing Cup; August: Moto Safety Day
• June 2017: the debut of Drift Open in Pszczółki; an attempt at the Guinness go-kart record stopped after 12 hours
• September 2017: the WMPP Classic season finale with 45 competitors
• October 2017: Roman Nowak becomes acting director of PORD after Wiesława Kasprzewska-Charkin retires
• March 2018: a public dispute between the residents' association and PORD over noise
• 1 June 2018: a WIOŚ measurement shows the limits exceeded by 2.3 and 3.7 dB; on 19 June the Commune Council restricts the track's operation to working days
• August 2018: the petition in defence of the autodrom passes 10,000 signatures
• 9 January 2019: the Voivodeship Administrative Court in Gdańsk declares the resolution invalid (II SA/Gd 564/18)
• August 2019: round five of the Polish Drifting Championship; Ducati Baltic Weekend
• spring 2020: a pandemic break, operations resume on 16 May
• July 2020: the balance of five years of operation
• 2021–2022: JDM Track Day, best times 44.60 s and 41.83 s
• 16 November 2025: the centre stops working on Sundays
• 19–20 June 2026: Pirelli Track Day and Suzuki Moto Szkoła