MotoPark Toruń: the airfield track the city fell out over

On Monday, 30 March 2026, Łukasz Broniszewski of the Bydgoskie District Council asked the journalists gathered in Toruń for a moment of silence, and then broke it with a recording of the sound of a motoring event. So began the loudest spring in the roughly thirty-year history of MotoPark Toruń, a training and sports track on the southern edge of the Aeroklub Pomorski airfield. Two petitions, two noise measurements and three months of talks at the city hall ended in a compromise that changed the rules of driving at a place its defenders call one of the few in Poland where drift can be practised legally.

Location	Toruń, ul. Łukasiewicza 66, southern edge of the Aeroklub Pomorski airfield, next to the Motoarena stadium
Type	training and sports track with skid pads; certified higher-level Driving Technique Improvement Centre
Length	1000 m
Surface	asphalt
Direction of travel	counter-clockwise as standard
Built	early 1990s (according to the operator)
Area of the complex	over 20 ha, two independent zones, three skid pads
Land	in perpetual usufruct of Aeroklub Pomorski (confirmed by a 2013 ruling of the Supreme Administrative Court)
Main events	Oponeo Polish Rallycross Championship, FIA CEZ rounds (2017–2019), Drift Open (since 2011), DTS Winter, Track Day Trophy
Noise limit	98 dB in a static measurement, at most six vehicles on track at a time
Status	active

A moment of silence at Wały Sikorskiego

The petition „NIE dla hałasu z MotoParku Toruń” reached the information desk of the City Hall at Wały gen. Sikorskiego 8 that day. Broniszewski spoke on behalf of the residents of Bydgoskie Przedmieście, Bielany, Zieleniec, Brzezina and Wrzosy, who complained about weekend drift training, that is driving in a controlled slide, accompanied in his view by squealing tyres and howling engines. More than 400 people signed the document, online and on paper; the online version closed at 322 signatures, and the city hall counted 430 in the end.

Imagine that this sound is with you through the whole of Saturday and the whole of Sunday, at home, with the windows shut, in the garden, on a walk, in the forest at Barbarka.

The authors of the petition stressed that they did not want the track closed, only measurements during typical, hours-long training sessions, limits on hours, free Sundays and acoustic screens. The drivers' response came at once. The counter-petition „TAK dla driftu na torze Motopark Toruń” was set up on the very day Broniszewski published his text online, and by 23 March it already had close to nine thousand signatures against 156 under the residents' petition. The day after the residents' petition was filed, a two-hundred-page printout of the second document arrived at the city hall with 12,450 signatures, including almost two thousand from Toruń itself. One of the track's defenders put the stakes of the dispute in a single sentence, quoted by the organisers of the counter-petition: „The track is an inseparable part of this city. Without it only «uń» is left”.

Concrete from the airfield, asphalt from the nineties

The airfield next to which the track lies was built in 1912–1913 on the approaches to the Toruń fortress, four kilometres west of the city centre. It is run by Aeroklub Pomorski, whose first general meeting took place on 17 July 1935; the main runway 10R/28L is 1269 m long, 57 m wide and has a concrete surface. The track itself has the address Łukasiewicza 66 and neighbours the Motoarena speedway stadium, opened on 3 May 2009.

The beginnings of the track cannot be dated today more precisely than „the early 1990s”: so says the operator, and the regional media after it.

The most about the early years is said by a post placed in February 2011 on a Subaru drivers' forum by the account of the new operator. According to it, the venue was earlier called the rallycross track of Toruński Klub Motorowy, then Coloseum Motorsport, and its founder was Bogusław Bach, a rally driver of the 1990s and driving technique instructor, who in 1995 organised „Syrena races”, folkrace and rounds of the Polish rallycross championship here. The same post announced the MotoPark name, an asphalt loop a kilometre long with the option of adding a gravel section, and a driving technique improvement centre with three skid pads. It is an account by one side, unconfirmed in the press, but the 2011 plan matches what stands here today.

The operator writes of a 1000 m asphalt ribbon with barriers and tyre walls. The standard direction of travel is counter-clockwise; driving the other way requires the manager's consent. Next to the asphalt loop there is an asphalt and gravel course used in rallycross and drift.

From Syrenas to Drift Open

The oldest rallycross events at the Toruń track in the Motoresults results database are two rounds from 4 July and 19 September 2009, with 14 and 11 competitors. A decade later the scale was different: in April 2019 a round of the Oponeo Polish Championship gathered 104 drivers, in June 108 and in October 106; in parallel, rounds of the FIA CEZ (Central European Zone, that is the zone championship of Central Europe) were held here in 2017–2019, as well as rounds of the Lithuanian championship and the Baltic Series Rallycross Cup. In 2017 the track carried the sponsor name OPONEO Motopark Toruń, and for the June round the entry of multiple Polish champions Marcin Gagacki and Tomasz Kuchar was announced in seven classes, from „Maluchy” to SuperCars; admission for spectators was free. In the rainy 2019 round Gagacki won all his runs in SuperCars.

Drift arrived here together with the new name. The Drift Open series, founded in 2010, came to Toruń for the first time on 25–26 June 2011, returned in May 2014 and 2015, and since 2018 has held rounds here every season, in spring and in autumn; the organisers call Motopark the most frequently used track in the history of the series. In July 2025 the 79th round was held here, and on 3–5 July 2026 the 83rd, for the first time with the scored course laid out in the opposite direction to the previous editions. In winter the track is taken over by the DTS Winter series, run from November to March on a wet surface; the first two rounds of the 2026/2027 season are planned in Toruń for 15 November and 13 December. Between the drift and rallycross events there are the Track Day Trophy timed runs, from the „Nocne Kryterium Asów” of 5 December 2020 with 18 participants to the final of 11 November 2023 with 47, and the Motobazar, a motoring market held here twice a year.

Skid pads and police cars

The venue's second face is quieter. MotoPark is a certified higher-level Driving Technique Improvement Centre, ODTJ for short, running driving technique training, courses for drivers of emergency vehicles and specialist training for the services. The complex covers over 20 ha and is divided into two independent zones: the track with a skid pad and a manoeuvring yard, and a separate area with three pads, an automatic water curtain, an off-road module and a skid circle. The pads measure 100 by 20 m and 120 by 20 m, and in the „House of Safety” stand a rollover simulator and a crash simulator; the centre is run by Beata Żmudzińska-Czynsz. The emergency services and the police train here; the track's defenders raised exactly this in their petition as an argument for keeping it. The offer includes three levels of individual training; the highest, run under the Hyundai N Performance programme, costs 1400 zł in one's own car, and hire of a Hyundai i20 N is another 1200 zł. The board also lists many years of cooperation with Automobilklub Toruński and making the venue available free of charge to institutions and young sportspeople.

Whose land is it

The track stands on land over which the city litigated with the Aeroklub. In 1972 the Presidium of the Municipal National Council granted the airfield site in perpetual usufruct to Aeroklub PRL; in the early 1990s those rights were taken over by Aeroklub Pomorski. Toruń tried to have that decision annulled, arguing that it did not specify the purpose of the land. In March 2013 the Supreme Administrative Court (ref. I OSK 1834/11) dismissed the city's complaint, holding that the purpose „can be found in the reasoning of that decision” and that the Aeroklub still pursues it. Twelve years later the parties came to terms: after negotiations begun in May 2024 and the consent of the Aeroklub's general assembly in July 2025, the Aeroklub handed over to the municipality 26.4 ha around the airfield for the Toruń Zachód investment zone, formally on 7 November 2025; no housing development is planned on that land, and the city counts on over 116 million zł from the sale of the plots.

Decibels, petitions and a compromise

Because the track was operating before the rules on environmental decisions appeared in August 2005, it never had to undergo such studies. Noise, on the other hand, was measured twice at the request of the Environmental Protection Department of the City Hall, with an accredited laboratory taking part and during large events: in 2023 and on 31 August 2025. The first measurement gave a result „indistinguishable from the acoustic background”, the second 45.3 dB against a permitted 50 dB. The MotoPark board answered the petition with exactly those figures: „The fact that something can be heard does not mean that noise limits have been exceeded”. Adam Willma, a commentator for „Nowości”, retorted that the studies concerned continuous noise, averaged over an hours-long recording, and that Poland still lacks standards for impulse noise, already applied in Germany, France and the Netherlands among others.

Mayor Paweł Gulewski spoke up on the first weekend of the dispute, before the petition was even filed. „I live in Działki św. Józefa myself and I know this subject well from my own experience. I hear the sounds of cars on the track, of aeroplanes taking off and landing at the nearby Aeroklub Pomorski, or of speedway motorcycles from the Motoarena. It is a natural element of the working of a city where a lot happens and which offers varied activities”, he wrote, announcing that he did not intend to restrict the track's operation but was counting on a compromise. The answer to both petitions came after three months of talks, at the beginning of July 2026. The residents' petition could not be granted outright for lack of a legal basis, and the users' petition because leaving everything unchanged would clash with the need to protect the residents' comfort, Gulewski explained.

The negotiated rules look like this: a calendar of events on the track's website, driving from Monday to Saturday between 9 and 17 (except for mass events), on Sundays between 9 and 16 and only on a wet surface (outside competitions), no drift on public holidays, and in 2027 Sunday drift events only on the five or six competition weekends. Only vehicles with a complete exhaust system and noise up to 98 dB in a static measurement and 102 dB in a dynamic one will be allowed on track, six at most at a time. One demand went unfulfilled: acoustic barriers cannot be installed around the track, and they could appear only with the construction of the section of the diametrical road between Szosa Okrężna and Szosa Bydgoska, planned next to MotoPark, with no known completion date.

Six cars on track

For the amateur driver most of these arrangements came into force earlier than the mayor announced them. The entry rules in force from 6 April 2026 admit vehicles with a valid technical inspection, limit the noise of sports cars to 98 dB in a static measurement, require at least one effective silencer (two are recommended), allow six vehicles on track (eight on a wet surface), permit drift from Monday to Saturday between 9 and 17, and make Sunday drift runs and competitions dependent on the manager's consent. Across the whole venue „burnouts” are banned, in the paddock a limit of 20 km/h applies, and during sports driving belts and helmets; entering and signing a declaration means accepting the rules. Registered cars and motorcycles with a valid technical inspection may, according to the operator, use the track every day from 9 to 19 on days without training and closed events. The instructor Roman Meller argued in the spring of 2026 that the tightening of penalties for drift on public roads, in force since 30 March, was needed, because „drift on a public road means a deliberate loss of control over the vehicle”.

On the first weekend of July 2026, as the media were publishing the terms of the compromise, the 83rd round of Drift Open was under way at the track: Friday practice from 12 to 18, Saturday qualifying, Sunday battles in pairs in the PRO AM, PRO and Masters classes, the scored course for the first time in the opposite direction, free admission for children up to ten, a free stream online. Next in the calendar are two DTS Winter Sundays, 15 November and 13 December, both by design on a wet surface.

Timeline

• 1912–1913: construction of the airfield on the approaches to the Toruń fortress.
• 1935: founding of Aeroklub Pomorski.
• 1972: the airfield site granted in perpetual usufruct to Aeroklub PRL.
• early 1990s: creation of the track (according to the operator).
• 1995: according to the operator's 2011 post, „Syrena races”, folkrace and rounds of the Polish rallycross championship organised by Bogusław Bach.
• 2009: the oldest rallycross events at the Toruń track in the Motoresults database; opening of the neighbouring Motoarena.
• 2011: announcement of the MotoPark name and tidying up of the venue; first Drift Open round in Toruń (25–26 June).
• 2013: the Supreme Administrative Court dismisses the city's complaint over the perpetual usufruct of the airfield.
• 2017–2019: rounds of the FIA CEZ and of the Oponeo Polish Rallycross Championship; sponsor name OPONEO Motopark Toruń.
• 2023: first noise measurement commissioned by the City Hall.
• 2025: second noise measurement (31 August); takeover by the city of 26.4 ha of the Aeroklub's land (7 November).
• 2026: residents' petition (30 March) and counter-petition (31 March); new track rules (6 April); 83rd Drift Open round (3–5 July); compromise announced by the mayor (July).