ODTJ Lublin: the track on Grygowa that waited twelve years for an act

On Tuesday 20 May 2014 a priest blessed the asphalt on Grygowa street in Lublin, local government officials cut the ribbon, and the marshal of the voivodeship Krzysztof Hetman got behind the wheel and tested the skid pad. The director of the Lublin WORD Ryszard Pasikowski told the guests that other WORDs already envied Lublin this facility. The centre was built with a view to regulations that were to fill it with young drivers from 2016. The probationary period for new drivers came into force on 4 September 2026, in a changed form and twelve years after the opening. In the meantime the track on Grygowa was taken over by motorcyclists.

Location	ul. Antoniny Grygowej 32, Lublin, Felin district
Type	higher grade driving technique improvement centre (passenger cars and trucks)
Area	3.5 ha
Track	training track 800 m long with a rise and a watered section of corners, with a go kart track function
Skid pads	rectangular with a szarpak and water curtains, circular with water curtains, watered pad on a rise (the „slippery hill”)
Opening	20 May 2014; driving for drivers from 26 May 2014
Cost	12.5 million zł according to the WORD director after construction was completed (2015; in 2013 12 million zł was announced), including 2 million zł from EU funds
Owner and operator	Wojewódzki Ośrodek Ruchu Drogowego in Lublin
Sessions for amateurs	Moto-Sekcja motorcycle training and track sessions (2026 season: from 11 April to 19 September); hour long WORD car training
Status	active

Money from the fat years

The Wojewódzki Ośrodek Ruchu Drogowego in Lublin was created in 1998 as an institution examining candidates for drivers. The years 2007 and 2008 brought it a budget surplus and, as Ryszard Pasikowski recalled in 2015, „in other WORDs that money from the fat years was hoarded, patrol cars, ambulances and so on were bought”, while Lublin decided to „go somewhat against the current” and build a driving technique improvement centre. The reason was concrete: the act on drivers of vehicles announced that every freshly minted driver would have to take a driving technique course between the fourth and the eighth month after obtaining a licence, and every WORD was to have a facility on which this could be done. In the Lublin voivodeship there was no such place.

The WORD bought the land for the investment from the Agencja Mienia Wojskowego: 3.5 ha on Grygowa street in the Felin district. In March 2012 the WORD announced a tender for the design and construction of two skid pads and of a track; companies from Germany and Austria declared interest, and the investment was estimated at 6 to 9 million zł. Four bids came in. The winner was, according to Pasikowski, „maybe not the cheapest company, but one that gave the longest guarantee, as much as 5 years”. Construction started in October 2012; the construction itself cost 8.1 million zł, and the whole thing together with the plot and the equipment was to come to 12 million zł, of which 2 million zł came from European Union funds.

The schedule slipped. In 2012 the completion of the works was spoken of for August 2013, in September 2013 the deputy director of the WORD Artur Banaszkiewicz announced an opening in January 2014, and in April 2014 the contractor was still removing defects: unevenness on the pad and problems with the watering, with a deadline of 25 April. Pasikowski wanted at that time for the track to be available „all week from 8 to 20, also on Saturdays and Sundays”. After the opening on 20 May the centre started more cautiously: on weekdays from 8 to 17, with weekends depending on demand, and from Monday 26 May anyone could drive in with their own car for 100 zł an hour.

Szarpak and the slippery hill

The plan of the centre holds nine facilities: a training and administration building, a technical building, a manoeuvring yard, a rectangular skid pad with water curtains, a szarpak, a circular pad, a watered pad on a rise, a watered section of corners and a manoeuvring track with a go kart track function. A szarpak is a device that puts a car into a skid. „The key element of this facility is the szarpak”, explained on the day of the opening Jakub Jankowski, at that time an instructor, today the manager of the centre. „It is the hardest fragment of the track, but it is exactly here that drivers learn the most”. The rectangular pad has two rows of water curtains, the circular one as well, and the 800 m long track was laid out with a rise and a watered section of corners. The facility was designed as a higher grade ODTJ, that is one on which all the training required by the regulations may be conducted, including for truck drivers. In autumn and in winter the classes are held under artificial lighting.

The act for which all this was built did not work. Already in September 2013 Banaszkiewicz admitted that „the legislator has put off the provisions of the probationary period, so important for road traffic safety” to 4 January 2016, so for the time being the centre was to train willing individuals and professional drivers. An external business plan assumed a profit after ten years, on condition that young drivers started coming right away. Instead of them came drivers of privileged vehicles, hauliers within the initial qualification, candidates for driving technique instructors and drivers of the buses and trolleybuses of the Lublin MZK, who after the first training on a slippery surface, as Pasikowski related, „put pressure on the management” and as a result all of them were trained. In 2015 the centre was breaking even, and clients came also from the neighbouring voivodeships. In 2018 the WORD did itself what the legislator had not done: the first 750 people who passed the category B practical exam from 2 July were to receive a voucher for an hour long training at the ODTJ.

An hour of individual training in one's own car costs 250 zł today, in a group of three 150 zł, and hiring a car of the centre 100 zł an hour; the programme covers everything from the correct position behind the wheel and the moose test to an oversteering skid, braking in a corner and the szarpak. The WORD also organises open days. On Women's Day 2015 twenty women who had signed up earlier practised braking and skidding on the pad with the curtains, and each of them could sit behind the wheel of a BMW M3 with 400 hp prepared for drifting. Ten years later, in March 2025, a queue formed in front of the gate, and the director of the WORD Renata Bielecka spoke of a record attendance in the history of such actions.

The motorcyclists from Zemborzycka

Lublin had another track earlier. On Zemborzycka street there was a facility called simply Tor Lublin, a meeting place for motoring enthusiasts and of the Sunday car market; the nine hectare plot was bought in 2011 by the Interbud company, and in 2017 blocks of flats were already growing there. It was on Zemborzycka that the Moto-Sekcja club trained motorcyclists, and in the autumn of 2014 it negotiated an extension of the lease until 31 March 2015, which was noted even by the site of the track's opponents, tor-stop.pl. The editor in chief of „Świat Motocykli” Andrzej Drzymulski later called the ODTJ „a handkerchief to wipe away the tears after the lost karting track”, adding that motoring fans „lost here many years ago to the fans of building and selling flats”. When in 2021 Lublin drivers asked the city about a place for legal drifting, the city hall pointed to the WORD centre as the only option, and the spokeswoman Monika Głazik explained that „the main problem in building tracks is noise, which can be a nuisance for the residents nearby, and also environmental pollution”.

Moto-Sekcja is a motorcycle sports club with the status of an association, affiliated to PZM Lublin, and it has been training since 2009. It appeared on Grygowa in August 2015: the first motorcycle sessions took place on Saturday 29 August from 15 to 19, at a promotional price of 50 zł for non members. In January 2016 the club confirmed that it would organise regular sessions, training runs and courses here. The main trainer is Artur Lis, a retired policeman of the road traffic department, who ended his service after sixteen years, has starts in asphalt races behind him and twelve years in enduro with Polish champion titles. „People come to the training from all over Poland”, he said in 2022. „They are able to drive several hundred kilometres in order to practise their technique here, in nice conditions, with nice people”.

Drzymulski, who tested the facility in 2020 in a series about Polish tracks, warned against treating it like a racing circuit:

Lublin, in turn, is a purely training facility. We will not find one main driving loop there, but a whole grid of arcs, turnarounds, junctions and rises. [...] The terrain is fairly tight, so we cannot count on racing. That is even better, because such a track forces intensive work with the body and better control of the motorcycle with the throttle and the brake.

The same author praised the grip of the asphalt, the presence of a photographer at the training and the possibility of hiring a motorcycle with outriggers, which do not allow it to fall over; he also recalled that with the tight terrain there is at times a fence or a barrier close to the driving line and there are no gravel traps. In 2020 driving on the track cost from 60 zł, and training from 100 to 300 zł. In the 2026 season level 1 training costs 620 to 720 zł, level 2 from 560 to 660 zł; a division into groups according to advancement applies, and the exhaust system of the motorcycle must fit within the 98 dB limit. Since 2019 „MotoKobiece” training sessions for women only have been held once a month, thought up by a Lublin motorcyclist with the nickname „Milka”. In May 2025 more than 400 people took part in the free training of the WORD and Moto-Sekcja in the theoretical part and more than a hundred on the track.

Historic vehicles on the track and an act after twelve years

Apart from training, the centre is at times the arena of events which have no other place in Lublin. On 5 August 2022 a stage of the Polish Historic Vehicle Championship was held here as part of the 9th Motozłaz, and on 12 June 2022 soldiers of the 2nd Lublin Brigade of the Territorial Defence Forces trained here. On 26 May 2023 the participants of the 4th Rajd Ziemi Lubelskiej, the second round of the same championship, started their competition precisely on Grygowa; the organisers announced driving „on a real racing circuit”, which is rather an invitation than a description of the facility. Since December 2021 the WORD has invited drivers every year to the free „Bezpieczna zima z Mikołajem” action.

The probationary period for new drivers, written into the act of 2011 and postponed over the years, was never fully implemented in its original form. It was replaced by a new model introduced by the act of 17 October 2025 and applied from 4 September 2026: it covers every person who obtains a category B driving licence for the first time, lasts two years (three for seventeen year olds) and no longer requires training from everybody, but from those who exceed 12 penalty points. Such training lasts an hour, costs 500 zł and takes place on the skid pad of an ODTJ: emergency braking from 30, 60 and 50 km/h and driving in a corner with rising speed until control of the vehicle is lost, under the eye of an instructor who leads at most three people at a time. The regulation of the minister of infrastructure of 19 August 2026 came into force on 4 September.

A day later, on Saturday 5 September 2026, motorcycle sessions and level 1 training were planned at the ODTJ Lublin track; two weeks later the Moto-Sekcja season closes with a free training for women.

Timeline

• 1998: the Wojewódzki Ośrodek Ruchu Drogowego in Lublin is created.
• 28 March 2012: announcement of the tender for the design and construction of the skid pads and of the track.
• October 2012: start of construction.
• 9 September 2013: the WORD announces an opening for January 2014.
• April 2014: removal of defects of the pad and of the watering system.
• 20 May 2014: ceremonial opening; from 26 May driving for drivers at 100 zł an hour.
• 8 March 2015: open day of WORD Lublin at the ODTJ on the occasion of Women's Day.
• 29 August 2015: the first Moto-Sekcja motorcycle sessions on Grygowa.
• 2 July 2018: 750 vouchers for training for new category B drivers.
• 13 March 2020: suspension of training because of the COVID-19 epidemic; sign ups resumed on 30 April 2020.
• 5 August 2022: stage of the Polish Historic Vehicle Championship (9th Motozłaz).
• 26 May 2023: start of the competition of the 4th Rajd Ziemi Lubelskiej on the ODTJ track.
• 11 April 2026: start of the 2026 motorcycle training season.
• 4 September 2026: entry into force of the probationary period and of the regulation on training at the ODTJ.