Qualla: Raceway Venray

Raceway Venray: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poppo154, CC BY-SA 4.0. It started with a church. In the summer of 1961, the people of the village of Heide, on the edge of Venray in southern Limburg, needed money to build a parish church - the one now standing as the church of the Immaculate Conception - and someone proposed motocross. More than a hundred motorcycle racers showed up on 25 June for the first event, organized under the rather unlikely banner of the Roman Catholic Dutch Touring Club. Sixty-five years later, the same village's racing tradition has metastasized into the Netherlands' only banked NASCAR-style oval: a half-mile banked outer ring, a flat quarter-mile inner ring, a karting track running through both, and the only place in continental Europe where you can hear V8 stock cars at full song.

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Image: Poppo154 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Raceway Venray: From Janslust to Stichting

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poppo154, CC BY-SA 4.0. The original club, Motocross Club Janslust, ran the fundraiser races annually for more than twenty years. Weather killed the 1982 event. The 1983 financial loss - 6,500 guilders - killed the club. Former members Johan van Dijck, Jan Derikx and Harry Maessen refused to let the rac...

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Image: Poppo154 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Raceway Venray: Maessen Builds an Oval

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mick from Northamptonshire, England, CC BY 2.0. When the track lost its licence to host the Motocross World Championship Grand Prix in 1989, Harry Maessen made the decision that defined the rest of his career: he built an oval next to the motocross course. The inaugural oval race ran on 18 August 1990 on a 470-metre concrete l...

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Image: Mick from Northamptonshire, England | CC BY 2.0

Raceway Venray: August 2005

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ringpixel.de, CC BY-SA 4.0. Oval racing is a sport that knows what it costs. In August 2005, during the Stockcar F1 World Cup, the Dutch driver Piet Keijzer from nearby Helmond got a flat tyre at speed on the outside lane. He spun, drifted toward the infield, and met the oncoming Englishman Ed Neachell head...

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Image: ringpixel.de | CC BY-SA 4.0

Raceway Venray: An Illegal Circuit

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poppo154, CC BY-SA 4.0. Circuit de Peel was never actually legal. The municipality of Venray had simply tolerated it for decades on the practical grounds that organized racing was better than illegal motorcycling through the woods. In 1993 the surrounding land was designated part of the Ecologische Hoof...

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Image: Poppo154 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Raceway Venray: The New Raceway

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poppo154, CC BY-SA 4.0. Maessen had already started planning the replacement. In February 2007 he reached an agreement to relocate the circuit across the road from the original complex, an arrangement that required him to buy out a pig farmer for 1.1 million euros while the farmer used 410,000 of that t...

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Image: Poppo154 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Raceway Venray: What You Watch From the Grandstands

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pitlane02, CC BY-SA 3.0. The signature class on the half-mile is the LMV8 Supercup, founded as the successor to the European Late Model Series in 2013. The cars are modern American late models from Lefthander, Tanner, and Howe chassis builders, paired with older ASCAR shells, all running GM crate engines...

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Image: Pitlane02 | CC BY-SA 3.0