Paddock talk at the Italian and German Grands Prix revolved around a date of the 2016 FIM Motocross World Championship heading indoors and a stadium in Germany being considered for a remarkable step for the series.

Commenting exclusively at Teutschenthal last weekend Youthstream President Giuseppe Luongo claims that the main factories and works teams are receptive to the idea of taking MXGP under a roof and all the infrastructure practicality of a modern sporting stadium.

The Italian was able to reference the recent bad weather at Maggiora as example of why the experiment deserves a shot. “People talk about Maggiora as a mythical place, almost untouchable, but when you have rain like that then you see what happens,” he said. “We cannot bring a new audience to a circuit and expect them to be happy to wait in a field to be taken out.”

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Porting MXGP into facilities like permanent road racing circuits have been a trend for the series for over ten years with varying degrees of success. The last attempt at the Lausitzring in Germany lacked atmosphere with the stadium seating far from the racetrack and the seats were sparsely filled. Round 16 of the current calendar will occur at Assen in August with a presentation on the site’s first MXGP happening at the MotoGP meeting this week. “We need to have venues like Losail and Assen and to be able to offer the facilities with the right experience,” says Luongo.

While there is room in Grand Prix for a greater diversity of circuits – and maintaining the history and prestige of the sport is important with older venues like Maggiora, St Jean, Loket, Lommel and Uddevalla – the move indoors is a vast step and undoubtedly full of possibilities for taking the sport to a wider audience. It is an idea mooted for some time in the paddock. As for the track itself, when pressed Luongo commented: “It will be a short version of what we have now, not supercross. If we only have 10,000 spectators then maybe we can consider it a failure because there is a potential for a big audience.”