On Wednesday the Puglia Region announced the suspension of the expansion project of the Nardò Technical Center (NTC), the large Apulian complex of car tracks and other facilities owned by the German company Porsche, which uses it to test the cars it sells. The project was agreed between the Region and the company last August, and involves investments of around 450 million euros for the construction of new runways and public utility buildings in the surrounding area, as well as a plan to renovate the surrounding green spaces .
The expansion, however, was at the center of great controversy and protests from both environmentalist associations, according to which it would have led to the destruction of two hundred hectares of nearby forest with serious damage to the environment, and from the 134 owners of the surrounding land, towards whom the Region had started expropriation proceedings to free the area. There had also recently been strikes and protests by local unions following the death of a test rider while testing a motorbike on one of the track’s circuits.
The president of Puglia Michele Emiliano, of the Democratic Party and who had strongly defended the project even in the face of protests, sent a statement to the press agencies in which he said that the decision to suspend the expansion was taken «in line with the ministry [non ha specificato quale, presumibilmente dell’Ambiente, ndr], in order to reconsider some aspects of the procedure following the specific indications provided by the European Commission”. European parliamentarian Rosa D’Amato, of the Greens and Left Alliance, had turned to the European Commission to ask for an independent evaluation of the actual usefulness of the project for the local public interest.
The Nardò Technical Center is located between the municipalities of Nardò and Porto Cesareo, in the province of Lecce but on the border with those of Brindisi and Taranto. It has existed since the Seventies and was built by Fiat, which in 1999 sold it to a Turin technological development company (Prototipo Technologies Tofarello). In 2012 it was purchased by Porsche Engineering, the Porsche subsidiary that provides mobility engineering services, not only to Porsche but also to other automotive companies.
Over the years the NTC has also been used to carry out tests on historic prototypes, or to attempt records in particular conditions: such as the test of a six-wheeled Ferrari driven by driver Niki Lauda in 1977, or some world records set on an electric motorbike by the rider Max Biaggi in the nineties.
Today it is made up mainly of the large ring which can be seen very well from above, approximately 12 and a half kilometers long, and then of a dirt track and a circuit comparable to those of Formula 1 (it is the route inside the circumference in the part that gives towards the sea, it is 6.2 kilometers long and has 16 curves). The ring is divided into several lanes, and there are also other structures connected to the centre’s activities.
The Nardò circuit seen from above, from the track’s Facebook profile
The expansion plan involves the construction of other test tracks inside the ring and improvement works on existing ones, together with the construction of technical buildings, a logistics and maintenance centre, a service station for cars and trucks, new parking lots and other interventions. It also envisages the construction of a medical center with a heliport and a larger station for firefighting workers, which would also have been useful for fighting forest fires, but which in reality, as he pointed out Republicthey will in fact be useful to Porsche more than anything else.
