Greater Toronto Area: A Burgeoning Mecca for Racing?

Hello and welcome back to another edition of Steve’s Motorsport Blog! Today, I will be doing a bit of a deep dive into my local race tracks and answer a question that I have been wondering for a long time: has the Greater Toronto Area becoming an underrated Mecca for racing?

I had the idea for this post way back in 2019, and some things have changed since then, but I’m a neutral way, I believe. Before I dive in, I want to make one distinction: Since there’s a bit of a debate on what counts as being inside the GTA or GTHA, which includes Hamilton, ON, I will define the GTA as being within a 90min drive from Toronto proper.

Toronto has long had Mosport and the Exhibition Place street course that have hosted regional and international racing. However in more recent years, some new road course venues have opened. I won’t go into detail on those circuits because they are well known.

One of the existing tracks that are open today, but not as well known in the GTHA is Toronto Motorsports Park, located in Cayuga Ontario. It has a small track day road circuit, that only hosts time attack and drift events. There is also a drag strip located on the property.

The last circuit that is open is at the Porsche Experience Centre, which is located in Pickering, Ontario. It will to the public in late 2024*. This won’t be open for competition, but I suspect members of the public could purchase tickets to drive either their own Porsche or rent one for a length of time.

A bonus entry to this list is Shannonville Motorsports Park, located just east of Belleville Ontario. This is a great track day circuit, and hosts regional races from FEL and occasionally the Porsche Cup Canada and North America.

Now fortunately, a lot more attention than normal has been given to the GTHA as far as investment in racing infrastructure in the last decade, so I wanted to detail that in a post. There are 2 circuits being planned, and I’ll briefly mention a further cancelled project.

The first of the planned circuits is Oro Station. Being built outside of Barrie Ontario, this is designed to be a small FIA grade 3 circuit at 4.1km in length at its full configuration. Oro Station will able to host smaller regional races, and top flight GT class events, although I would probably limit to GT4 and TCR cars only. Radical Cup Canada has announced they will have a race there when it opens. This venue is slated to open in sometime before 2030, if I had to guess. The plan has met local approval, been officially graded by the FIA and the site has broken ground. Originally planned for a 2023 opening, it’ll be a great track to go watch races and take your car to lap around.

The next planned track is called Project 48 Race Resort (formerly known as Raven Race Resort), being planned in the beautiful Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario, just off of Highway 48. This is conceptualized as being the Virginia International Raceway of Canada, with private membership hotels that have garages next to the track and so on. Little detail about the track has been shared since early 2019, so I’m not sure if it’s been cancelled or still in the planning stages, so I’ll leave it as “planned” for now.

The last circuit I will mention is Canadian Motor Speedway, which was a highly publicized oval track with an external road course that was to be built in Fort Erie Ontario. The 3/4mi oval was designed with help from Jeff Gordon, that would have been able to accommodate Indycar and NASCAR series. It was a highly publicized venue when it was announced in 2009, given the famous people behind the circuit. Unfortunately, it had a myriad problems; local opposition was intense, with permits either being delayed or not given, the land purchase fell through, and the Ontario government opposed the construction of a new on/off ramp to the Queen Elizabeth Way freeway. Thus, it quietly died over the course of the pandemic.

Just look at the map above; there are not many places in the world with this amount of racing venues (not even including short track Ovals and Drag Strips) in such a concentrated place. Ontario also has Calabogie, which Multimatic use for testing new race cars and special road cars. However it’s up near Ottawa, a 4-5hr drive away. It’s an excellent course that sees regional races and Porsche Cup North America.

*The Porsche Experience Centre in Pickering Ontario is scheduled to open by the end of 2024, but may not be open at the time this post publishes.

So? Have I made the case well enough? You guys let me know in the comments section below.

---

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to read this. If you enjoyed the read, give this a like and share with others who will enjoy it too! If you are a WordPress user, please consider subscribing (it’s free!) to get all the latest notifications when these posts go live!