Great news for Indonesian MotoGP fans — in 2 years, you won’t have to fly somewhere like France, Japan or Malaysia to watch a race up close and in person.
The president director of the Indonesia Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC), Abdulbar M. Mansoer, said they have signed a contract with Dorna Sports — the exclusive commercial and television rights holder for MotoGP — to host a race in 2021.
“We signed a contract with Dorna in January. Brazil was the other contender, but we ended up winning the race. We’ll prepare the venue by building a circuit,” Abdulbar said yesterday, as quoted by Bola.
The race venue will be the Mandalika Circuit, a street circuit soon to be built in the West Nusa Tenggara capital of Lombok.
At the moment, the duration of the contract and other details included in it have not yet been published.
As reported by Motorsport in November of last year, the race venue development contract has been awarded to a French construction company, Vinci Construction. The company has been allotted 131 hectares of land surrounding Mandalika, a business area located in south of Lombok.
Abdulbar said ITDC has also secured funding from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). He’s optimistic that the construction of the 4.3-kilometer street circuit, which will start in October this year, will be concluded just in time before the race.
The street circuit is predicted to bring a large number of tourists to Indonesia, especially Lombok. One race, or grand prix, takes about four days from the qualification stage to the final race. ITDC estimates there could be around 100,000 spectators attending the race each day.
“One race needs around four days, because there’s the qualification stage and Moto2 as well. If there were 100,000 spectators each day, and 150,000 on the last day of the race, we could get approximately 300,000 visitors [to Mandalika],” Abdulbar said.
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