The Finnish Grand Prix , scheduled for the weekend of July 10-12, is officially confirmed as the twelfth stop on the 2022 MotoGP calendar, with the KymiRing being the second track to open this year, after Mandalika, In Indonesia.
Despite the fact that the promoter of the championship ensures that everything will be ready to host an event that returns to the Nordic country 40 years later (1982), there are many uncertainties surrounding the timely completion of the works on the facilities.
To dispel any doubts and verify the viability of the Kymi Ring on the ground, Dorna and the FIM will send “a prospecting group, with operations, television, logistics, etc.,” a source from the promoter explained to Motorsport.com. In this sense, it is necessary to take into account the short window of time that the operators have had to work in a location that during most of the winter has been plagued by low temperatures, and by snow.
Although Dorna fully trusts that the local organization will have everything ready for the scheduled date, the idea is to prevent a repeat of what happened at the appointment in Mandalika, in Lombok, where the second race of the year was held despite the obvious shortcomings of the layout. For all these reasons, Dorna wants to verify the real situation of the Finnish layout, located in the town of Kausala, near Kouvola and about 140 kilometers northeast of the capital, Helsinki.
The Finnish Grand Prix was due to join the MotoGP calendar in 2020, but a delay in the works and, above all, the outbreak of the pandemic, forced it to be postponed until now. Before all that, some MotoGP test riders visited the track in August 2019 to, with a test, test the conditions of the asphalt.
Those in charge of shooting then were Bradley Smith, Jonas Folger, Sylvain Guintoli, Mika Kallio, Stefan Bradl and Michele Pirro, giving at the end of the two training days their conclusions and some indications to finish improving the layout of the track.
