Padborg Park: a circuit beside a runway and noise counted in laps

On the weekend of 21 and 22 June 2003 the Danish Touringcar Championship came to the new circuit near Padborg for the first time, and its final was decided on the finish line. Jan Magnussen tried to pass Casper Elgaard in the last corner and gave him a slight push, and Elgaard's BMW 320i crossed the line sideways, leaving the track in the process. The win stayed with Elgaard. As late as February that year the circuit's website warned that the landline would work only after 15 March. Padborg Park was built by a former airline pilot next to an airport runway, from used barriers and containers, and more than twenty years later a circuit costing DKK 3.8 billion is planned in its vicinity.

Location	Vesterbæk, about 6 km north-west of Padborg, Aabenraa municipality; the site adjoins Kruså-Padborg airport
Type	permanent race circuit combined with a driver training centre (including two automatic skid pads)
Length and layout	2150 m, 12 m wide; four right-hand corners, five left-hand corners and a chicane (operator's data)
Opened	2003
First environmental permit	12 December 2002, Sønderjyllands Amt
Founder	Jens Enemark
Owner and operator	Padborg Park I/S (CVR 26 75 98 70), managing director Tom Pedersen
Noise restrictions	motorsport training on two fixed days of the week (Monday to Saturday) between 8 and 16, on weekdays at most 55 dB(A) at the neighbours' houses; five two-day events a year with no limits
Fastest lap in the class record list	57.725 s, Mikkel O Racing (Porsche), Danish Endurance Championship, 16 October 2021
Main events	rounds of the Danish Supercar League; in 2026 three of the league's six weekends
Status	active

The pilot, the sand and the used barriers

Jens Enemark was a professional pilot. He flew for Cimber Air from 1986, rose to the rank of captain, and in 1994 lost his licence because his mucous membranes could not tolerate the dry air in the cabin. Before he stopped flying he had built a karting track in an old gravel pit in Asserballe near Augustenborg, today the Sønderborg Racing Center, and it was there that he first went through the Danish environmental impact assessment procedure. He raced as an amateur at Jyllandsringen and once or twice a year at Ring Djursland. As he writes, driving at those circuits was heavily restricted for environmental reasons, so he decided to change that.

As an amateur pilot he knew Kruså-Padborg airport, which then belonged to Bov municipality. According to Enemark the municipality had had enough of the cost of keeping the airport going, so he offered it a track beside the runway: aviation, driver training and motorsport would share one site, and the municipality would be rid of its deficit. After several more years of environmental assessments he got his approval. Earlier he had checked the ground and found clean sand under twenty centimetres of soil, on which asphalt could be laid almost directly. The protective barriers, the containers for the buildings and the race control tower were all bought second-hand. „Everything was used!”, he recalls, and that is why the track could be built for little money.

The official trace of the construction begins in autumn 2002: on 8 October the county authority Sønderjyllands Amt permitted the piping of 30 m of the Læsbæk stream and the construction of a driver training centre on heathland, and on 12 December it issued a permit to build and operate such a centre with the possibility of holding motorsport events. In February 2003 the circuit's website presented it as one of the longest driver training facilities in Denmark and gave the lap length as 2070 m with a width of 12 m. In October the same site, with the same description of the corners, already gave 2150 m; the available sources do not show what was changed in between. That second figure still applies today.

The chicane and the hairpin at the end of the straight

The calendar for 2003 provided for an event called Danmarks hurtigste bil on 7 and 8 June, then a Danish Touringcar Championship weekend, the Danish motorcycle championship in July and a September round of the national championship, and to close the season in October „Le Padborg”, a long-distance race of six and a half hours. The events were run by the club Motor Sport Sønderjylland, which operated at the track.

The first DTC weekend showed where overtaking happens on this track. In the semi-final Magnussen, in a Peugeot, was faster than the veteran John Nielsen before the chicane and squeezed into the gap when Nielsen left him room. In the final, with 23 cars, he started from sixth on the grid and moved up mainly by braking at the hairpin at the end of the straight. Right after the race Elgaard spoke about the last corner:

„When I went through the corner at the end of the straight, it was the last chance for Jan to pass me. I could see that he was getting into the right position, but I didn't believe that he would try. I had full throttle on, and so had Jan. He gave me a small push, and then it was just a question of continuing until I had passed the finishing line”.

In May 2004 John Nielsen won the DTC final at Padborg, taking a record eighth victory in the finals of that series. „I'm so pleased now, because the circuit is in my old home town region”, he said. The oldest entry in the class record list comes from the first season: on 14 September 2003 Leif Jørgensen did a lap in a Swift SC95F in 1.02,608. In September 2008 Jan Magnussen set a DTC record in a BMW 320si, 1.01,704.

The track created series of its own as well. At the start of 2006 its website reported that after a successful four-hour race in October Padborg Park had taken the initiative of the Danish Endurance Championship, an endurance championship with two rounds on site; in the 2006 calendar, beside two DTC weekends, there was a DEC round in August and its final in September. The fastest lap in the class record list kept by the timing company raceresult.dk also belongs to this series: 57.725 s by the team Mikkel O Racing in a Porsche, on 16 October 2021.

Noise counted in laps

The long, flat site by the airport did not free the track from a dispute over noise. The nearest neighbouring property lies about 400 m north of the loop. In June 2005 Sønderjyllands Amt approved motorsport events together with a change to the regional plan and an environmental impact assessment. Complaints were lodged against the permit and the case moved through successive instances: Naturklagenævnet, the nature protection appeals board, upheld the change to the plan in October 2006, Miljøstyrelsen, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, upheld the permit with changes in December 2006, and Natur- og Miljøklagenævnet issued another decision in March 2012. A supplement adopted by Aabenraa municipality in April 2013 was sent back by the board for reconsideration, and the municipality announced new conditions on 21 March 2017.

The 2017 document turns noise into arithmetic. Motorsport training may be held on two fixed days of the week, from Monday to Saturday, from 8 to 16, and between 15 November and 15 March on at most ten days. The days for the following year must be announced by the track by 15 March in the local press, on its website and on a board at the entrance. On every training day the loudness of all arriving vehicles is measured, and from their average follows how many laps per hour may be driven: at an average sound power level of 115 dB it is 713 laps on weekdays, at 125 dB only 71. Every crossing of the finish line is recorded by transponders, and at the neighbours' houses the noise may not exceed 55 dB(A) on weekdays and 50 dB(A) on Saturday after 14.

The basis for these figures was an analysis of more than 900 loudness measurements from 2013–2016 and of the timing system records. It showed that laps in training last from 60 to 70 seconds, 65 on average. The municipality wrote in its reasoning that under such a system drivers have a natural incentive to avoid particularly loud cars, because they raise the average loudness and lower the permitted activity. Outside this rhythm, the 2002 permit, with its later amendments, allows five events a year, each lasting two consecutive days (weekends), with no noise limits. When in March 2020 the covid rules allowed gatherings of at most ten people, the municipality agreed, until 30 March, to training on four days a week instead of two, in groups of three to five cars.

The instructor who bought the track

Enemark sold Padborg Park in 2009. According to the operator, Tom Pedersen, born in 1981, was then an instructor at the track, became managing director of the company Padborg Park I/S, and a year later took over the whole business. His record includes a Jutland and Funen karting championship won at the age of 15, a win in the Scandinavian Formula Renault Cup, eight DTC race wins in 2006–2010 and three titles in the second division of the Danish Endurance Championship. The operator describes him as a boss who often sits behind the wheel himself when guests go for a fast ride with a professional.

Today the most important races at the track belong to the Danish Supercar League, a league that, according to its organiser, brings together the most popular classes of Danish motorsport. In 2026 three of its six weekends took place at Padborg: the season opener on 25 April, the Night Race on 4 September and the final on 3 October. At the Night Race the final heats are run late on Saturday evening, on a lit track. The operator advertises the facility as the second longest race track in Denmark, although on another subpage it still calls it the longest.

The barrier

On 29 May 2011, during the first round of the Danish motorcycle championship in the superbike class, 41-year-old Thomas Harding, on a Suzuki GSX-R 1000, lost control of his machine while braking from high speed and hit a barrier head-on. Unconscious, with multiple fractures and internal bleeding, he was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Flensburg, where he soon died; the race was stopped immediately.

On 22 October 2021 a 32-year-old motorcyclist died at the track; he was due to ride test laps that day. According to the police he hit a protective barrier and was thrown off the motorcycle; on the evening of that day officers could not yet say why it had happened. A few days later „JydskeVestkysten” wrote that the accident had left its mark and that everyone was very shaken by it, and that the track's owner, Tom Pedersen, was deeply affected by it.

To the track in your own car

Amateurs had been driving here from the first seasons. In summer 2004 the track, advertised then as the newest race track in Denmark, invited people to „arrive and drive” events: all you had to do was turn up in a registered car or on a motorcycle, pay 110 kroner and drive three laps, with no booking and without the full protective equipment required of DTC teams. In January 2005 the home page invited visitors to a tab called „Prøv selv”, that is „try it yourself”, with a note about driving the whole track in your own car. On test days in 2006 a vehicle could not exceed 93 dB either stationary at 4500 rpm or on a pass-by.

The operator sums up today's track days in the sentence „We have the track, you have the car”. Only cars that have never raced and are in good technical condition may drive, and a car may not be louder than 99 dB on a pass-by; the operator advises quietening it down at home. Cars with and without registration plates are admitted. A driving licence, a helmet and seat belts are required. A full-day track day from 8 to 16 cost 1400 kroner in 2026 with lunch included, and a four-hour „after work” session from 16 to 20 cost 1200 kroner with a sandwich and water; an additional driver paid 450 kroner, and under the participation requirements no passengers may ride in the car. For October the operator set two last dates: 12 October, an evening session with a lit track, and Saturday 24 October.

The track day rules reflect the character of the loop. You always overtake on the left, leave the track at the end of the long straight, and in the left-hand curve Big Mag a faster car may pass a slower one when the latter keeps to the right edge and signals it with the right indicator. Cool-down laps for the brakes and the engine are driven distinctly slower, with the right indicator on. When the whole track is hired, the noise limit depends on the number of vehicles and reaches 99 dB on a pass-by, and on Saturday from 14 it drops to 89 dB.

Six kilometres of asphalt on paper

On 11 May 2026 a father and son, Henrik Lyngbye Pedersen and Mathias Lyngbye Villadsen, heirs of one of the founders of Novo Nordisk and themselves involved in motorsport, presented the Circuit of Denmark project. For DKK 3.8 billion they want to build a circuit for 100,000 spectators with motocross and karting facilities, hotels and a conference centre in the vicinity of Padborg Park. The loop is to be 6006 m long with 18 corners, and the aim is an FIA grade 2 licence; Formula 1 is among the investors' ambitions, but not in the first step. The layout is being designed by the studio of the Austrian former F1 driver Alex Wurz.

The documents that TV Syd obtained under public access to information rules list a long series of formalities: from a new local plan and an environmental permit with noise limits, through studies of protected species, to consultations with Germany under the Espoo Convention. The project concerns 14 landowners and 17 plots, and the mayor of Aabenraa counts on a first race in 2031. On 28 May TV Syd reported that representatives of the project had met twelve landowners. „It takes the time it takes”, said project director Rebecca Steele.

The old track came back in that conversation as a warning. „There is no doubt that a project on this scale will change our area”, the Conservative mayor of Aabenraa, Jan Riber Jakobsen, told the broadcaster DR. The journalist also asked him whether the new facility would not repeat Padborg Park's problems with noise that bothers neighbours. Jakobsen answered that when building from scratch many safeguards can be introduced from the start, and that residents will be heard. The same text quoted John Nielsen, a driver from Southern Jutland, who saw in the project a great opportunity for the image of the region and of the whole of Denmark. The first track near Padborg was built from used barriers and containers on sand beside a runway; the second will now be decided by the authorities.

Timeline

• 2002: 8 October, consent to pipe a section of the Læsbæk stream and to build the centre on heathland by Kruså-Padborg airport; 12 December, the first environmental permit from Sønderjyllands Amt.
• 2003: the track opens; 21–22 June, the first Danish Touringcar Championship weekend; in October the long-distance race „Le Padborg” is scheduled.
• 2005: 20 June, the permit for motorsport events together with the change to the regional plan; complaints were lodged against the decision.
• 2006: two rounds of the Danish Endurance Championship, a series initiated by Padborg Park, in the track's calendar; Miljøstyrelsen and Naturklagenævnet consider complaints.
• 2009: Jens Enemark sells the track; Tom Pedersen, then an instructor at the track, becomes managing director of the company and subsequently takes over the business.
• 2011: 29 May, the death of motorcyclist Thomas Harding during a round of the Danish championship.
• 2012: decision of Natur- og Miljøklagenævnet on the conditions for motorsport events.
• 2017: 21 March, Aabenraa municipality announces new conditions: two fixed training days and a lap limit depending on the loudness of the cars.
• 2021: 16 October, the fastest lap in the class record list (57.725 s); 22 October, the death of a 32-year-old motorcyclist during a test.
• 2026: 11 May, presentation of the Circuit of Denmark project; three rounds of the Danish Supercar League at Padborg.