Shannonville Motorsport Park: fifty years near Belleville

On the Thanksgiving weekend in October 1976, the first motorcycle races were held at the barely finished circuit near Belleville, Ontario. It was cold. The main race of the day, for F-1 machines, was won by Jim Allen on an Egli-Yamaha TZ750, and in the support race he fell twice on his TZ250, in the same corner that bears his name. The facility was then called Nelson International Raceway. Fifty years and four changes of ownership later, Shannonville Motorsport Park has four road-course configurations and still runs training programmes for both motorcyclists and car drivers.

Location	7047 Old Highway #2, Shannonville, Ontario, Canada; east of Belleville, by Highway 401
Type	road course with several configurations; alongside it a karting and drift track, a drag strip and a skid pad
Configurations	Long Track 4.03 km, 14 turns; Pro Track 2.47 km; Fabi Track 2.23 km; Nelson Track 1.8 km; karting and drift track 1 km; 1/8-mile drag strip
First event	Thanksgiving weekend, October 1976
Site	146 acres (about 59 ha)
Long Track lap record	1:42.820, Pascal Picotte, Yamaha YZF-R1, Canadian Superbike Championship qualifying, 2004 (according to CSBK)
Owner	The Motorsport Group Inc. (John Bondar and Steve Gidman), since October 2019
Main events	Canadian Superbike Championship, Canadian Touring Car Championship, regional RACE Moto motorcycle racing, VARAC historic racing
Status	active

A track that began as karting

It began with a plot of land on Old Highway 2. According to the press release announcing the sale of the circuit in 2019, the facility began as a karting track owned by a group of Toronto motorcycle enthusiasts: Tom Faulds, Don Williams, Harry McCluney and John Nelson. Nelson, born in Ireland, came to Canada for the motorcycles, opened shops and in the end bet on Honda; in 1974 his family bought the land in Shannonville and built a small rental karting track on it. The operator of the facility reduces this history to a single sentence: the track was built in 1974 by John Nelson, a motorcycle enthusiast with his own shop in Toronto, in order to hold races.

By 1976 Nelson had taken over the management of the facility, and at the end of that year the small loop was rebuilt and extended. Full seasons of regional racing began in 1977; at one point Shannonville hosted 13 rounds for two organisations from eastern Canada. Among the regional series that came here was the Quebec-based Brimaco, the main series of the 1970s. The oldest of the loops, Nelson Track, still bears the founder’s name today.

Friends drove for free

In 1979 the track was bought by Jack Boxstrom, a driver who in 1962 had entered his Lotus Mk 9 in the Player’s 200 at Mosport, in a field with Stirling Moss, Masten Gregory and Jim Hall. He kept Nelson on as track manager. Years later Boxstrom told the newspaper The Globe and Mail that he had almost gone broke because “all my friends came out and drove around for nothing”. After the 1980 season he founded, together with Colin Fraser, the organisation RACE (initially Roadracing Association Canada East), and RACE and the constantly improved Shannonville became the backbone of Canadian motorcycle racing in the 1980s. In September 1980 the Nelson loop hosted the second round in history of the Canadian Superbike championship; it was won by Rueben McMurter of London, Ontario, on a Kawasaki KZ1000 Mk II.

Alan Labrosse made his debut here in the rain in spring 1979 and, in a field of 40–50 riders, finished the race in sixth place; he later won Canadian champion titles in the 125, 250 and 500 cc classes. In 1981–1985 Colin Hine and Scott Goodyear ran the Canadian School of Motor Racing at Shannonville. In October 1984 the track hosted a national car final modelled on the American Runoffs: 130 drivers competed for ten Canadian championship titles in single twenty-lap races on a six-turn, 1.8 km loop. In the GT2 class Richard Spenard won in a Volkswagen Scirocco, and among the historic cars Boxstrom himself raced a 1960 Sadler.

The loop named after Fabi

Bertrand Fabi of Sherbrooke became Canadian Formula 2000 champion during that final. Raymond David, a driver and owner of racing driving schools, gave him his Reynard for that race; within 12 laps Fabi took pole position and then won comfortably. David, Spenard’s financial partner, then helped him move to England. In 1985 Fabi won the British and European Formula Ford 2000 championships there, and for the 1986 season he joined Dick Bennetts’ West Surrey Racing team in British Formula 3, where his teammate was to be Damon Hill. In February 1986, during private testing at Goodwood, he left the track at the fast Madgwick corner and died in hospital in Chichester. Richard Dutton, whose team ran Fabi in Formula Ford 2000, told Motor Sport magazine, when asked who the best driver he had ever run was, that “as the complete package Bert stands above anyone else”, Juan Pablo Montoya included.

At the end of 1986 Raymond David bought the Shannonville track. According to the 2019 press release he doubled its length and built the characteristic grandstands along the start straight. The historicracing.com database says that during the 1988 expansion one of the loops was named after Fabi. The Motorsport Memorial database dates to the same year the Pro Track, which is 2.47 km long and runs around the perimeter of the site. Today the track has four configurations: Long Track (4.03 km), Pro Track, Fabi Track (2.23 km) and Nelson Track (1.8 km).

According to the operator, under David the track became a place where future champions were trained. The Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame states that Richard Spenard founded the Spenard-David school at Shannonville in 1985 and was the first teacher of Jacques Villeneuve, Greg Moore, Patrick Carpentier and Ron Fellows. The track operator cites Villeneuve as an example of a champion who honed his skills here, and advertises Shannonville with the slogan “Birthplace of Champions”. The motorcycle school FAST, owned by David, was run after the end of his career by Michel Mercier, the 1990 RACE Superbike champion. The track was managed by Alan Labrosse, to whom the post was offered by David, who sponsored him.

Motorcycles, slicks and snow in May

In 1992 the track was taken over by David’s partner, Jean Gauthier, who remained its owner longer than anyone else. The richest history of the track is motorcycle racing, Stephanie Wallcraft of Wheels.ca stated in 2020: “Shannonville’s richest history is motorbike racing”. By 2019 Shannonville had hosted 57 rounds of the national Superbike championship on three different configurations, more rounds of that series than any other track. In 2002–2005 the Long Track was the venue of the season finales, including two title deciders settled by five points: in 2003 the champion was Pascal Picotte, in 2005 Francis Martin. The championship later moved to the Pro loop, and in September 2023 CSBK confirmed that the season finale would again be held on the long configuration.

Cars raced here too. At the end of May 2009 a round of the Canadian Touring Car Championship was run on the full loop. On Sunday morning, as the drivers lined up on the start straight, rain began to fall, turning to hail, then snow and freezing rain, and the drivers were already on slicks.

The track also has a dark chapter. The Motorsport Memorial database lists three motorcyclists who died here in 1984–2005, among them Glenn Schauble, who in May 2000, in the second race of his professional career, lost control of his motorcycle while riding a wheelie on the finish line and was hit by the riders behind him. During a Super Series race on 11 June 2023 five motorcycles collided; Jose Azevedo died and four riders were treated at the scene. The circumstances of the collision were investigated by the collision reconstruction unit of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).

Five years of courtship

The track had been for sale since 2014. John Bondar, organiser of the Canadian Touring Car Championship and a former president of the Ontario region of the Canadian Automobile Sport Clubs, needed five years to sign the deal, two of which were negotiations with the previous owner; as he told Wheels.ca in 2020, he recorded every meeting and every conversation in a leather-bound notebook. The transaction was announced on 11 October 2019: Shannonville was bought by Bondar and Steve Gidman, a technology entrepreneur who in the early 1980s had raced here in the club Formula Libre. They announced the transformation of the track into a multi-purpose centre with an emphasis on corporate events.

The first tasks were down to earth. Bondar spoke about the track flooding during downpours, about a paddock of gravel and soil, and about new fencing, because from the road side the site “looks like a farmer’s field”. He did not intend to change the layout of the track: “That has a rich history, so that doesn’t make any sense to change it”. The operator announced the completion of an events centre for 150 people at the entrance. In the same interview Bondar told how, when buying a house in Belleville, he was introduced to the director of a construction company, who turned out to be Steve Nelson, the son of the founder of the track. “We figured that was good karma and we knew that the deal would happen”, he recalled.

Your own car on the long loop

Track days for drivers with their own cars are run today by the company GT Race; the operator’s website refers directly to it. They run on the Long Track, which according to the organiser has 14 fast and slow turns, good sight lines of the track ahead and large run-off areas. Eight such days are planned for the 2026 season, from 24 April to 17 October. Participants drive in three groups (beginner, intermediate, advanced), seven times for 20 minutes, and passing is permitted only in zones marked with the blue flag; a helmet is required, and can be rented, and pickups, SUVs and single-seater open-wheel cars are not admitted. A full day cost CAD 250 plus HST in 2026 when booked at least 11 days before the date.

The operator itself offers a shorter format. On selected Mondays from 18:00 until dusk it holds Motion Monday, that is two to three hours of driving on the Long Track in groups chosen according to declared experience, in cooperation with Rolling Start HPDE and with instructors on site; an evening cost CAD 60 including tax in 2026. The track is also rented by clubs: the St. Lawrence Automobile Club has scheduled an autumn driving day for 18 October 2026. Those who want to race can start with the two-day Shannonville Racing Academy, after which one may apply for a car racing licence; participants arrive in their own car and with their own helmet.

Fifty years later

The anniversary of the first race was celebrated on the last weekend of September 2026, during the final of the regional RACE Moto series. Francis Martin, three-time Canadian Superbike champion, came back from retirement to ride a first-generation Suzuki GSX-R1000 in the colours in which he had raced that motorcycle at Shannonville a quarter of a century earlier. On Saturday evening, 26 September, the event’s honorary grand marshal Jim Allen talked on camera with the track’s longtime announcer Pat Gonsalves. Both had been at the first motorcycle race at this track, fifty years earlier.

Chronology

• 1974: John Nelson’s family buys the land in Shannonville and builds a karting track.
• 1976: on Thanksgiving weekend, the first motorcycle race at Nelson International Raceway.
• 1979: the track is bought by Jack Boxstrom.
• 1980: the second round in the history of the Canadian Superbike championship, on the Nelson loop.
• 1984: national car final, Canadian F2000 championship for Bertrand Fabi.
• 1986: Fabi dies in February; at the end of the year the track is bought by Raymond David.
• 1988: expansion of the track and the loop named after Fabi.
• 1992: Jean Gauthier becomes the owner.
• 2019: the track is bought by John Bondar and Steve Gidman.
• 2023: CSBK confirms the Superbike championship season finale on the long loop.
• 2026: celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the first race.