Lavender Mountain (Лавандова Гора), the first permanent parallel racing track in Ukraine, will host its opening weekend on July 5–6. Money generated from ticket sales for the Lavender Mountain Speed Festival will go toward the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The track is located at Kozatska Sloboda Rakovets in Volya Yakubova just outside Drohobych in Lviv Oblast. Kozatska Sloboda Rakovets is a Cossack-inspired “eco-landscape park” with 24 hectares of forestry, eight lakes for fishing, and buildings like wood cottages.

Parallel track racing is, in layman’s terms, a head-to-head rally in which two competitors race side by side on their own courses. A paved version of this discipline is currently by the Race of Champions, though ROC also dabbled in off-road versions in its early history as well as on snow and ice during its two-year stay in Sweden in 2022 and 2023. The Ukrainian Parallel Racing Cup used to operate in the late 2000s.

At 2.4 kilometers, Lavender Mountain is longer than the previous record held by the parallel track in Mariupol (2.34 km) and Kherson (1.95 km). Track designers initially planned to make it exceed three kilometers before paring it down to the final length. Care also had to be taken to ensure the course wouldn’t interfere with park operations. It is five to six meters wide on the straightaways, which extends to between eight and ten meters in the corners.

Construction began prior to the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. Of course, once it commenced, all motorsports in Ukraine were put on hiatus including track building. Once the picture became safe enough to resume, it was a gradual process that stretched over the next three years. The limestone for the course was laid this past winter before being flattened so it is compact and dense enough to not be damaged. A preview of the course was released in April, where the club had to use ATVs to show off the layout since it was not yet suitable for cars.

In an April interview with Rally in Ukraine, GAC president Serhiy Yezhenkov explained the club is responsible for organizing races on the circuit while other events like track days and test sessions are up to Kozatska Sloboda Rakovets owner Lev Hrytsak.

The Speed Festival will use regulations from the Ukrainian Parallel Racing Cup, albeit updated for modern times. The first day on July 5 will be for vintage cars while modern cars race on Sunday.

Yezhenkov expressed hope of expanding the concept into a full-fledged series or even use the track as a rally stage, neither of which are practical at the moment because of the war. Still, the GAC is eager to gradually bring back racing in Lviv—which has been targeted by Russian airstrikes but is nowhere near the frontlines as it’s in the western part of Ukraine—like hillclimbing and rallies.

Feature image credit: Galician Automobile Club