Circuit de Lédenon: the track a Nîmes lawyer dug with a bulldozer

By day, Jean-Claude Bondurand appeared in his robes before the court in Nîmes. In the evenings he took them off and went to the building site together with his wife Sylvie: the two of them, with a bulldozer they had bought, carved a track into the stony slope above the village of Lédenon. That, according to the family account, is how a venue came into being that has remained in Bondurand hands from the first day, is driven in the left-hand direction, and among drivers has given rise to the saying that whoever can drive at Lédenon can drive anywhere.


Location	Lédenon, Gard department, about 20 km east of Nîmes, by the A9 motorway
Type	permanent road circuit, FIA grade 2 homologation
Length	3.156 km according to the Bondurand family; English-language databases give 3.151 km
Opening	16 June 1973
Direction of travel	anti-clockwise
Race record	Soheil Ayari, Saleen S7-R, 1:17.762, GT1 class, 2007 (confirmed by a single source)
Owner	the Bondurand family; the track is run by Marie Bondurand
Main events	the French GT, touring car and Superbike championships, Coupes de France Promosport
Status	active, prefectural homologation of 26 April 2023

A lawyer, a wife and a bulldozer

The idea was born in the early nineteen seventies, when Paul Ricard opened his circuit at Le Castellet. Bondurand, a lawyer from Nîmes and a keen racing fan, later put it simply: „Paul Ricard had made his circuit at Le Castellet and I thought to myself, why shouldn’t I do that? It didn’t seem that crazy to me - after all, what is a circuit if not just a single stretch of road?”. The founders' daughter, Marie Bondurand, adds in her conversation with „Objectif Gard” that her father shared the passion with two or three befriended couples and imagined that driving-school pupils would hone their skills on the track. Asked whether nobody took him for a madman, she answered with a smile: „Oh yes!”.

The place had already served motorcyclists: motocross was ridden on a grass track in the natural hollow. In 1971 the couple bought the land and a bulldozer, and for the next two years worked in the evenings and at weekends, laying the course along the shape of the terrain. According to „Endurance Info” the machine came from the state Domaines office and was used for digging in the rocks. Everything was financed out of their own pocket; the operator still stresses today that the couple relied on their own money alone.

The track was essentially finished in 1972, but the French motorsport federation FFSA demanded changes before it granted a licence. Homologation came on Saturday 16 June 1973. About thirty Matra Bagheeras and other cars of the time took to the track for the opening. The family therefore counts three years of work from the decision to the first lap.

Thirty-eight gear changes

The character of the track follows from the way it was built: with no money to level the ground, it was simply routed along the slope. The operator advertises it as the most undulating, the most winding and the most technical circuit in France, where one lap calls for about 38 gear changes. RacingCircuits.info states that its elevation difference is the greatest among the country's circuits, and that for much of the lap drivers look up at the sky above the ridges. The layout has not changed since the opening.

What stands out most is the direction of travel. The loop is driven to the left, anti-clockwise, which RacingCircuits.info calls unusual for a French circuit, while the operator goes further and writes of the only such venue in the country. The internal regulations explicitly prescribe that direction and forbid entering the pit lane against it. There is only one straight and it measures a mere 400 metres; the rest of the lap is filled with curves and corners. „Endurance Info” lists their names as known to everyone: the triple left (triple gauche), the bridge corner (virage du pont), Carrierasse, Camion, Cavalet, Servie and Cuvette.

The length of the track depends on the source. Marie Bondurand gives 3.156 km, the RacingCircuits.info and Motor Sport Magazine databases 3.151 km. The difference is five metres and most probably follows from different ways of measuring, though none of the open sources explains it.

From Matra Bagheeras to the French championships

For the first four years only small events were held here. The breakthrough came in 1977, when production car racing arrived at Lédenon, soon turned into the Supertourisme championship, and in the same season Formula Renault as well. Since then the track has been a fixed point of the national calendars: it hosts rounds of the French GT, touring car and Superbike championships. In August 2012 a reporter of „Objectif Gard” described a Sunday with the French Superbike championship, which drew the curious from all over the region, with the motorcycle Coupes de France Promosport due on the track a week later.

The race record, according to the Motor Sport Magazine database, belongs to Soheil Ayari, who in 2007 lapped in a GT1 class Saleen S7-R in 1:17.762. No other source for that figure could be found in this session.

Drivers from the top shelf have been here too. Marie Bondurand recalls that Jean Alesi, who comes from nearby Avignon, treated Lédenon as his training course, and that Alain Prost drops by regularly. Instead of a history of great victories, the track has rather the reputation of an examination: hence the maxim she quotes, „Quand on sait rouler à Lédenon, on sait rouler partout”, that is, whoever can drive at Lédenon can drive anywhere.

A family business without subsidies

The Bondurands did not hand the track over to strangers, though it was not always easy. Marie Bondurand admits that the years following the opening „were not always obvious” and that for a time the venue was placed under management, but that since the end of the nineteen nineties „everything is going well”. She stresses that it is one of the last private circuits in France, without any subsidies, kept up from the fees paid by clubs and drivers. RacingCircuits.info describes a venue run by Sylvie and her three children, working 300 days a year, with an annual turnover of 2.6 million euros, of which 700 thousand euros goes back into the upkeep of the track every year.

Jean-Claude Bondurand died in February 2022 at the age of 91. Today the track is headed by Marie Bondurand who, as „Objectif Gard” writes, took over from her parents.

A track that demands so much of its drivers also has its list of victims. On Saturday 2 April 2005, during the first round of the Coupes de France Promosport, moved to Lédenon after the event at the Carole circuit was cancelled, Jean-Luc Chalumeau (34, from Saint-Jean-de-Védas) and Stéphane Loicq (33, from the Paris region) died in a collective fall of five motorcyclists. The accident happened in the repechage round of the 600 cm³ class, beyond a left-hand corner on a long, blind descent; three other competitors were taken to hospital with light injuries. Serge Ferrer, chairman of the regional road racing commission, told the daily „Midi Libre” at the time that the track „is very rigorous, some riders hate it because they find it too hard”. The next day, in the finals, many motorcyclists did not take the start, some put on black shirts, and others pulled into the pits after two or three laps.

The second fatal event in the open sources was not a race but a private day. On Wednesday 31 March 2021 at about 12:45 two motorcyclists collided while overtaking at high speed; one of them died despite the rapid arrival of the rescue services. That day the track was rented by a group from Germany. The gendarmerie from Nîmes opened an investigation into involuntary homicide, and the second participant was taken into custody. The open sources give no information about the outcome of the proceedings.

Fire on the hills

In the summer of 2026 the track made the headlines of the local media for another reason. On 5 July a fire consumed more than 540 hectares in the communes of Lédenon and Bezouce. Two weeks later the member of the European Parliament Chloé Ridel, together with two local associations, demanded stricter rules: the track should not operate when the fire risk reaches the orange level. Marie Bondurand replied with a statement in which she assured that since the early nineteen seventies no fire has been attributed to the activity of the track, that the venue occupies more than a hundred hectares of constantly cleared and mown ground, and that on the day of the fire it immediately made the ground available to the rescue services, which set up a command post and aerial resources there. She called the use of the fire as an argument for closing the track a „regrettable confusion”.

A track day at Lédenon

Amateurs have been driving here for a long time. As early as 2012 Marie Bondurand described the monthly open sessions without booking: it was enough to arrive in your own vehicle, with a driving licence, to fasten your belts, and 20 minutes cost 26 euros. The calendar for 2026 provides for ten such free practice dates (entraînement libre), from the end of January to December, in the same system: no registration, 20-minute sessions alternating for cars and motorcycles, 33 euros for a session by car and 28 euros by motorcycle. The condition is an FFM or FFSA licence or third-party liability insurance, and the noise limits are 97 dB for cars and 99 dB for motorcycles.

The framework is set by the order of the prefect of the Gard department of 26 April 2023, which the internal regulations invoke. Entry to the grounds through a coded gate, a static noise measurement of every vehicle before going out on track, sporting driving only between 9:00–12:30 and 14:00–17:30 (the chequered flag five minutes earlier), a ban on starting engines between 22:00 and 8:00, no access to the track and the pit lane for persons under 16 without a licence. The track also states that it is not liable for theft, and forbids charging electric cars from the campsite sockets on pain of a 25 euro penalty.

Marie Bondurand sums up the reputation of the track in one sentence which, according to her, circulates in the community:

„Quand on sait rouler à Lédenon, on sait rouler partout”.