Circuit EIA in Pont-l'Évêque: a track on a Normandy farm's meadows

As late as the early 1990s, Jean Dutacq's cattle grazed in winter on the meadows where the circuit at Pont-l'Évêque lies today. The farmer from Normandy's Pays d'Auge was already over fifty when he bet on motoring leisure and in April 1992 opened a circuit on the land of his farm. Circuit automobile EIA is a training circuit: for more than thirty years amateurs have been learning on its two kilometres of asphalt to drive sports cars, to brake in an emergency and to avoid obstacles, and today they can also come here in their own car and drive with an instructor in the passenger seat.

Location	138 route du Lac, departmental road D48, Pont-l'Évêque, Calvados department, Normandy; approx. 10 km from Deauville
Type	driving and advanced driver training centre: car circuit, skid pan, karting track, off-road trails in the woods
Car circuit	approx. 2 km, flat, with driving lines painted on the asphalt; according to the operator homologated by the FFSA, the French motor sport federation
Skid pan	230 m straight and a circle 80 m in diameter, automatic sprinklers, “water wall”
Karting track	850 m according to the operator, FFSA-homologated, with electronic timing
Grounds	estate of 90 ha, with woodland
Opened	April 1992; the company Espace International Automobile registered on 2 January 1992
Founder	Jean Dutacq, formerly a cattle farmer
Operator	until 2025 the family company EIA; in 2025 taken over and absorbed by the company 3P Circuits
Traffic	at least 25,000 visitors a year according to the management (2016)
For amateurs	one hour of coaching in your own car with an instructor: 179 euros including third-party liability insurance (as of 5 October 2026)
Status	active, open every day except Tuesdays

The farm behind the woods

Jean Dutacq was born in 1938 in Saint-Vaast-en-Auge, and in 1964, the year of his wedding, he settled in Reux near Pont-l'Évêque and never moved away. He raised cattle. His daughter Véronique Morel told “Le Pays d'Auge” that, influenced by a series of encounters, her father decided to give up his work as a farmer and cattle breeder for motoring leisure; the newspaper called it the risky bet of a man past fifty. In another interview Morel explained that the area is a tourist one, so there was potential here. The company Espace International Automobile, EIA for short, was registered on 2 January 1992, and the circuit opened in April.

This is how Véronique Morel described in 2022 the land on which the circuit stands: “It was a farming estate, our parents' farm. Meadows where the animals grazed peacefully in winter”. Morel stressed that the family did not reshape the landscape: “We did not touch the environment, we are very attached to this place”. The circuit cannot be seen from the road, and according to Morel visitors who drive through the woods on the estate are surprised by the sight of a 30-hectare plateau. The whole estate, where the company has its registered office at the address Domaine de Betteville, covers 90 ha according to the operator.

Dutacq drew his wife and children into the venture: Véronique, formerly a lawyer, who took charge of sales and administration, and Maxence, who ran the centre and the instructors and in 2022 was technical director. In the 2014 trade register Jean and Monique Dutacq were listed as the company's managers. At first the firm targeted corporate clients and opened up to private individuals later. “We realise that at the time it was not a mass-market product”, Morel said. Seminar rooms were fitted out in a former farm building; in 2001 the operator's website listed four, named BMW, Lotus, Rover and Renault, and after the sessions invited guests to the club terrace overlooking the lake. In 1992 the firm had five cars, including a Caterham Super Seven.

The instructor from Le Mans

Dutacq also surrounded himself with people from the motoring world. Véronique Morel recalled that Jean-Pierre Jaussaud joined the team and was a staff instructor here for ten years. Jaussaud won the 24 Hours of Le Mans twice: in 1978 with Didier Pironi in an Alpine-Renault A442B and in 1980 with Jean Rondeau in a Rondeau M379B with a Ford engine. He died in 2021, a year before the circuit's thirtieth birthday.

The operator's pages from 2001, preserved in the Internet Archive, show the offer of those years: a Renault Spider and a Lotus Elise, each with 150 hp, and a Lotus Seven with 115 hp and a weight of 520 kg, on the “large 2 km driving circuit”, with the instructor linked to the driver by radio. In the site's description it listed among its activities “the first BMW driving school”. In 2003 it counted more than 90 vehicles on 90 hectares: Formula Renault cars, BMWs, Caterhams, Spiders, Elises, off-roaders, quads and karts, plus three asphalt tracks, a course for off-road vehicles and 15 km of forest trails. In September 2003 a Smart Roadster with gearshift paddles at the steering wheel was added. The 2005 price list put half an hour of driving at 90 euros in a Lotus Seven and at 95 euros in an Elise or Spider; there was one car for one or two trainees.

The motoring press began to visit the circuit. In July 2004 François Chapus of the Caradisiac website tested an Opel Speedster Turbo here and praised the “technical and very safe EIA circuit near Pont-l'Évêque”; he admitted that, while exploring the limits of grip, he spun the car just under ten times, twice unintentionally. In January 2005 Roman Scobeltzine of the magazine “Challenges” compared a Volkswagen Golf GTI with a Renault Mégane RS here on the “small and twisty circuit”, which on a cold, damp day was “turned into an ice rink”.

BMW, gendarmes and a thousand young drivers

Alongside the performance driving there was a safe-driving school. The operator's pages from 2002–2005 describe one- and two-day courses in driving on slippery surfaces in the BMW 320i and 330d: emergency braking with and without ABS, understeer, oversteer and spins, and on the second day sessions on tyres, braking in a corner and avoiding obstacles. In 2005 one day cost 297 euros, two days 525 euros. Today the operator writes of thirty years of cooperation with BMW France on safe-driving courses on a dedicated track, where drivers practise how to behave in aquaplaning, emergency braking and avoiding obstacles. That track is a 230 m straight and a circle 80 m in diameter, with automatic sprinklers and a “water wall”; “Le Pays d'Auge” described it as a track “shaped like a racket”.

At the beginning of 2006 the BMW safe-driving centre operating at the circuit and the gendarmerie launched a scheme for young drivers, who could take a one-day course on preferential terms; the operator's website in 2007 addressed it to people aged 18 to 30. Its leader Roger Gély, a former gendarme and chairman of the “1000 young drivers” association, described the course of the day in 2016: a little theory in the morning, then driving in conditions imitating snow, black ice and aquaplaning, learning the seating position at the wheel, goggles simulating 0.8 per mille of alcohol, in the afternoon braking and avoiding obstacles, first in the centre's cars and then in their own, and from 16:30 a session with a gendarme on the causes of accidents. The exercises took place in BMW cars. In 2017 the operator stated that the Association Jeunes Conducteurs Calvados had trained more than 5,500 young drivers here over more than ten years; a participant paid 45 euros against a real cost of 250 euros for the day, and there were forty dates a year. A year later Véronique Morel told BFM Business of about 650 participants a year; according to the channel, the cost of the course is often covered by insurers.

BFM Business journalists then tried out for themselves the part of the course devoted to the phone. Instructor Thierry Duguey, the circuit's deputy manager, asked them to write a text message at 60 km/h; the car nearly went off the track, and the emergency braking came two or three seconds too late.

“All the time you spend on the phone is time you are not spending looking at the road”. (Thierry Duguey, 2018)

Two kilometres without elevation changes

The car circuit is about 2 km long and, according to the operator, has no elevation changes, offers excellent visibility, has a new surface, various types of corners and hairpins, and driving lines painted on the asphalt. A reporter from “Le Pays d'Auge” who drove an Alpine A110 and a Lotus Elise here in 2019 wrote that the braking and gear-change points are marked by signs on the surface and small boards, and called the circuit itself technical, with many corners and several braking zones; although it lies a few hundred metres from the motorway and from the town, it is surrounded by woodland. According to today's price list a quarter of an hour at the wheel means 8 to 10 laps; in 2016 the management put it at 16–20 km.

“It is a technical circuit, with tight corners and hairpins. It really lets you learn, even for novices”. (Maxence Dutacq, 2025)

There is also a karting track on the grounds, which the operator today measures at 850 m, with a fleet of 30 karts of 270 cc and 10 junior karts of 120 cc. In 2016 the management spoke of at least 25,000 visitors a year, about fifteen permanent staff and operation for eleven months of the year; in winter the team looks after the grounds and the cars. The newspaper gave the same number of visitors in 2022, noting that it referred to a normal season.

From Caterham to Ferrari

In 2016 the roadster fleet included Lotuses, a Porsche 997 Carrera S, a Clio RS and a Toyota GT86, chosen to be accessible. “It must not be the technology that wins, but the driver”, Morel explained. In 2022 an Audi R8 was added, and today the operator's price list includes, among others, a Ferrari 458 Italia, a Lamborghini Gallardo LP560, a Porsche 911 GT3, a Mustang Shelby GT350 and a Formula 4 single-seater. Courses in top-end cars are also run here by two outside organisers, Sprint Racing and Pilotage Passion, with which the operator, as it writes, has cooperated for fifteen years; they offer them on set dates.

Television showed the circuit. In May 2016 a crew from TF1's Automoto magazine filmed a programme about three SUVs here with Marion Jollès; the presenter admitted that the crew had not known the circuit at all before. In an episode of the same programme broadcast on 10 September 2017, Denis Brogniart and racing driver Raymond Narac tested Porsche cars here. In October 2023 the singer Gérald de Palmas released the music video for the song “Personne”, filmed at the circuit at the beginning of September.

New owners

At the thirtieth anniversary, in 2022, the firm was still run by the founder's family. Changes came in 2025 and are known from notices in BODACC, the French official bulletin of commercial notices. In February the company was converted into a simplified joint-stock company (SAS) with Maxence Dutacq as its president; in March the company 3P Circuits became president. The merger plan of 17 June 2025 recorded that 3P Circuits held all the shares of EIA and would absorb it. According to the Sirene register, EIA was closed on 17 October 2025, and its removal from the trade register was announced on 2 February 2026.

3P Circuits, based in Le Pecq, was registered in January 2023, and in April of that year it bought the business of the car circuit at the airfield in La Ferté-Gaucher. The legal notice of that circuit's website names Rodolphe Péneau and Samuel Potencier as publication directors, and in 2023 the seller's financial adviser presented them as the founders of Groupe PPK, a company operating under the Sprint Racing brand, which welcomes more than 60,000 customers a year at nearly 25 circuits in France and Belgium. Sprint Racing, present at the circuit in Normandy for years, gives a length of 2000 m in its description of the venue. In August 2025 Maxence Dutacq was still running drives at the circuit as its manager.

At that time Jean Dutacq was taking leave of another role. For more than forty years he was mayor of Reux, and in March 2026, at 88 and as the oldest mayor in the Calvados department, he handed the office over to his successor. In September 2025 the prefect of Calvados and Anne d'Ornano presented him with the gold medal of honour for local government service, and the “Le Pays d'Auge” report on the ceremony quoted words about his path “from the farm to the car circuit in Pont-l'Évêque”. In June 2026 his portrait was hung in the Reux town hall next to the portrait of Baroness Alix de Rothschild, who headed the commune in 1953–1982.

In your own car, with an instructor beside you

A driver who wants to drive here in their own car can book an hour of coaching with the operator. The offer covers all passenger cars and every skill level: an instructor holding the BPJEPS, a French professional coaching diploma, rides in the car and, depending on the trainee's level, alternates theoretical tips with driving. An hour costs 179 euros and includes third-party liability insurance; slots are booked on weekdays, and you need to bring a copy of your driving licence and of the vehicle registration certificate. The Terre d'Auge tourist office lists this service together with track rental, from 179 euros.

Instructors also share advice in the press. Sitting in 2025 beside a “Le Pays d'Auge” journalist at the wheel of a Ferrari, Maxence Dutacq told her to brake hard before the corners, accelerate on the exit and stick to the lines on the asphalt, and added: “Always look far ahead, that is the key to a good line”.

In September 2026 the circuit opened for one morning solely for twelve teenagers with intellectual disabilities from a medical-educational institute in Pont-l'Évêque, whom members of the Amicale des Porschistes de Normandie drove around the loop in their Porsches. The sports educator Bertrand Freslon, who devised the project, said that beyond the experience itself he wanted them to understand one thing: “that a circuit is not the road”.

Timeline

• 1964: Jean Dutacq settles in Reux.
• 2 January 1992: registration of the company Espace International Automobile.
• April 1992: opening of the circuit.
• 2001: the operator's website describes a 2 km driving circuit and courses in Lotuses and a Renault Spider.
• 2003: more than 90 vehicles and three asphalt tracks on 90 ha.
• 2004–2005: Caradisiac and “Challenges” tests at the circuit.
• 2006: launch of the scheme for young drivers with the gendarmerie.
• 2016: filming of TF1's Automoto magazine.
• 2017: broadcast of the Automoto episode with the Porsche test at the circuit.
• 2023: Gérald de Palmas music video.
• 2025: takeover of EIA by the company 3P Circuits and the plan to merge the two companies.
• 2 February 2026: announcement of EIA's removal from the trade register.