The legacy motorsport's 'Olympics' can build

Grabbed by the shoulders from behind, I was manoeuvred to face the direction of the big screen in the paddock. Two teenagers were celebrating taking third place in what was admittedly a low-rent karting competition.

"That is why," exclaimed my assailant, "you should do all the events!" It was perhaps the defining moment of the inaugural Motorsport Games at Vallelunga last weekend. That's the bronze medal won by Russians Olesya Vashchuk and Vladislav Bushuev in the Karting Slalom Cup, not my encounter with George Andreev from their national motorsport federation.

Given that Klim Gavrilov was already halfway to gold in the Touring Car Cup after winning the first TCR race, it meant Russia was heading for the pinnacle of the medals table.

Gavrilov completed the job with second place in race two, and Russia moved to the top spot thanks to the bronzes won in the karting and in the Drifting Cup the previous evening by Ilia Fedorov.

And Team Russia stayed there, making it the 'winner' of the first edition of the new Olympics-style Motorsport Games organised by the FIA and the Stephane Ratel Organisation.

Russia took a 'you've got to be in it to win it' approach to the event that came complete with a glitzy opening ceremony around the Circus Maximus in nearby Rome. It had an entry in the full roster of events completed by the GT and Formula 4 Cups on the track, and the Esports Digital Cup off it.

Andreev, general manager of the Russian sporting authority and the national steward at his home grand prix at Sochi this year, explained that there had been a concerted effort to assemble a full team for the Games. He even suggested that there was some financial help to ensure that happened, though didn't elaborate.

"You can do everything here," says Andreev, who I'd talked to earlier to ask for his thoughts on the Games. "It offers the chance to show that your country and drivers are at a top level, even if you are not competing in those categories across the full season."

That's important for a country like Russia when it comes to motorsport. It may be slightly condescending to call it an emerging nation as far as motorsport goes, but we all know it doesn't have the same heritage or infrastructure as many western countries. The Games were clearly of significant value to Russia, and its victory, I'm convinced, will be of value to the Games.

Its haul of medals is going to be big news back home in the same way as Turkey's triumph in last year's GT Nations Cup in Bahrain, the event that spawned the Games, was celebrated in the homeland of winning drivers Ayhancan Guven and Salih Yoluc.

The Games is going to expand for year two in 2020. Ratel wants to double the number of events from six to 12, and he plans to take it to Paul Ricard, something still subject to FIA approval

I'm not sure a win for the British team would have garnered much attention outside of the specialist media, even if our federation, the newly-renamed Motorsport UK, did take the event seriously. The same goes for Germany, France, the USA or any other of the nations with a deeper motorsport pedigree.

And there lies the value of the Games, which to our western eyes in countries with deep motorsport roots might appear to be a niche event at best and an oddity at worst. It is a way for lesser motorsporting nations to put their name on the map, a way to spread the gospel of our sport. That was, at least partly, the intention of the FIA and Stephane Ratel when their ideas for the Games grew in the wake of the GT Nations Cup event for amateur drivers at the back end of last year.

A win for a minnow of the world of motorsport provided impetus for the idea of a wider-ranging national competition to grow.

"The impact of Turkey's win was so strong that we thought there was something to exploit on a larger stage," says Frederic Bertrand, the FIA's director of circuit racing. Accessibility, he says, was important. That explains the slightly bizarre karting event that was key to Russia's success, in which teams of two drivers aged between 14 and 16, one boy and one girl, drove around cones in electric go-karts.

The same goes for the Esports contest. The FIA wanted some kind of karting event and, with the nearest track 30 or so miles way, it decided to come up with something new.

"We thought a slalom was a good way to include as many ASNs [national sporting federations] as possible from countries that don't have proper karting activities," says Bertrand. "It was the same feeling for the Digital Cup: let's offer a category to countries that don't have a big field of racers where they can come and compete for a very affordable amount."

The karting, as well as the Esports event, attracted some nations not represented elsewhere at the Games. Albania, Croatia and Serbia were among those taking part exclusively in the karting event. The countries just on the grid for the Digital Cup were Costa Rica, Singapore and Macedonia, the last admittedly with a competitor based in Australia. Belize had been due to take part in the karting too, but was a no-show.

The same mentality explains why Bertrand wants the FIA's new off-road Cross Car category for bike-engined, tubeframe buggies on the bill of the Games next year. It has been devised as an accessible form of motorsport.

But it would be wrong to say that only emerging motorsport nations embraced the idea of the Games. France was one of the nations on the entry list for all six events, along with home nation Italy, Kuwait and, of course, Russia.

Motorsport UK saw the value in the Games. Its chief executive officer Hugh Chambers spent five years with the British Olympic Association, so, he says, he's "familiar with the aspirations and the language being used". The Games were, he continues, "something in which we were keen to be involved in a significant way".

Once the rules and regulations had been finalised, MSUK asked for interested participants to apply to take part. "We actually received multiple applications across all the categories and then considered what were the strongest," he explained. "Unfortunately F4 didn't work out and drifting, which isn't regulated by us in the UK, proved quite difficult."

The Motorsport Games is probably best described as an oddity for now, partly because examples of motorsport being drawn up on national lines have been few and far between through history

The attraction of the Games was certainly there for the ASNs, through which entries had to be made. For the first running of the Games to attract participation from so many countries was a considerable achievement. The number would have topped 50 but for Belize's withdrawal and that of Greece from the drifting. The entry from 49 nations was all the more impressive for the timescale in which it was assembled.

The deal between the FIA and SRO was only finalised in June and the Games formally launched in July. That was just before continental Europe shut down for the August holidays, so Ratel and his team didn't begin preparations in earnest until the end of the summer.

"It was complicated to finalise all the agreements with the FIA; we finally managed it in June," says Ratel. "I really thought at that point, forget it. We couldn't have [FIA president] Jean Todt coming to an event with eight TCRs and 10 F4s, to an incomplete event. My team was focused on the Spa 24 Hours in July [where the Games were launched] and then everybody would be going on their summer holidays in Europe."

Ratel explained that he was urged to push on with the plan by Bertrand. "Fred was like, 'this is our window of opportunity, we do it now,'" he recalls. "I said, 'OK, you may lose your job and I may lose a lot of money.'"

The Games is going to expand for year two in 2020. Ratel wants to double the number of events from six to 12, and he plans to take it to Paul Ricard, something still subject to FIA approval. It is a facility that will allow racing on two different configurations of circuit at the same time, incorporates its own CIK-level karting circuit and has rally stages on and off-site. The adjacent airfield, reckons Ratel, could become a drag strip for the duration.

He wants endurance racing and rallying, which he calls "two of the pillars of motorsport", on the bill. He's talking about historic motor racing too, and drag racing. Ratel appears to be saying the more the merrier as the event grows.

Ratel is adamant that the Games will go on to become an important fixture on the international calendar. There are countries out there that already want to win the thing, and the success of the first edition will surely only garner more, whether they are grandees of the motorsport world or part of the emerging market.

The Motorsport Games is probably best described as an oddity for now, partly because examples of motorsport being drawn up on national lines have been few and far between through history. But the evidence from Vallelunga last weekend is that the appetite is there to ensure that it becomes much more than that over time.

"At the opening ceremony it seemed so obvious," says Ratel. "Why didn't it exist for the past 70 years?"