MyCandy Arena Lentiai · Motorsport & Territory
Europe’s RC racing scene returns to Lentiai: the Euro Nitro Series final comes to MyCandy Arena, 2–4 October
The small circuit in Borgo Valbelluna closes out Europe’s biggest nitro RC season. Andrea Grigoletto, president of Associazione Prealpi R/C: “Watching drivers arrive from all over Europe to race here, in the Valbelluna, is a pride that goes beyond sport.”
There are moments, every so often, when a village of a few thousand souls discovers it has become, for a few days, the centre of something else entirely. It rarely happens by chance, and almost never happens quickly. In Lentiai, it is about to happen again.
From 2 to 4 October 2026, MyCandy Arena — the radio-controlled model car circuit in the municipality of Borgo Valbelluna — will host the final round of the Euro Nitro Series (ENS), one of Europe’s most closely followed championships for nitro-powered scale racing cars. Before reaching the Valbelluna, the ENS caravan will already have passed through Ettlingen in Germany, Rucphen in the Netherlands and Aigen in Austria. Then, to hand out the season’s final verdicts, the appointment will be here, among the pit boxes and kerbs of a facility that, three years ago, did not even exist.
“A pride that goes beyond sport”
The man best placed to explain what all this means for those who imagined and built MyCandy Arena is Andrea Grigoletto, president of Associazione Prealpi R/C, the club that wanted — and delivered — the facility. Dalla Piazza, the association’s president for eleven years, contributed to conceiving and designing the track together with Grigoletto, drawing on their shared experience in the sport as drivers too.
“When we started, the goal was simply to give back some space to a passion that was losing ground in Italy. Seeing drivers, technicians and families arrive today from all over Europe — and beyond — to race in Lentiai is a pride that goes beyond the sporting result itself. It means that the work and the time that dozens of volunteers poured into this project meant something. MyCandy Arena is no longer just our track: it has become a reference point for RC racing across Europe, and it is the Valbelluna that gets to tell that story.” — Andrea Grigoletto, president of Associazione Prealpi R/C
Words that carry weight, considering where it all began: an idea, four years of red tape, more than twenty months of construction, and the official opening — on 9 March 2025 — of a circuit that now appears on international calendars alongside far more storied venues.
339 metres of tarmac in the heart of the Valbelluna
The circuit runs for 339 metres, between 5 and 6 metres wide, with a main straight of 76 metres and a second one of 50. These are not arbitrary numbers: every detail of the track was designed with both performance and safety in mind — kerbs with a shallower profile, different heights of synthetic grass between the inner and outer zones, and barriers engineered to limit damage to cars that go off track.
Around the tarmac, a paddock that has little modesty left about it: 128 covered pit spaces, expandable to 250, powered work tables, compressed-air stations, bodywork-washing areas and technical stations for preparing the models. Add a bar, a green area with picnic benches, and parking equipped with water and power even for motorhomes. Everything needed so that a race weekend becomes, for those arriving from afar, a weekend worth living too.
Accessibility has not been overlooked either: the driving stand, raised three metres above the track, can be reached even by people with reduced mobility, and the facility includes an accessible bathroom with a heated shower. It is a detail that says a lot about the philosophy behind the project, in a discipline where — unlike so many others — athletic ability counts for little: what matters is concentration, driving feel, reaction speed, and the ability to set up your own machine.
From Lentiai to Europe, and back again
In 2025, MyCandy Arena had already hosted a round of the Euro Nitro Series, with 145 registered drivers at the Italian leg. In 2026 its role carries more weight: no longer just any stop, but the one that closes the season and crowns the champions. From Ettlingen to Rucphen, from Aigen to Lentiai: the championship comes to an end in Borgo Valbelluna, not in Rome or Milan.
For one weekend, drivers, mechanics and companions from across half of Europe will sleep in the hotels and farm-stays of the Valbelluna, have breakfast in the village bars, and look for somewhere to have dinner. It is a niche form of tourism, far from the numbers that move through the Dolomites’ better-known destinations — but precisely for that reason, a valuable one: someone will arrive in Lentiai knowing everything about a 1:8-scale competition engine and nothing at all about where the Valbelluna even is. They will leave knowing both.
Looking ahead: the MyCandy Academy
Alongside the international races, Associazione Prealpi R/C’s project also looks to those who will inherit the track. The MyCandy Academy involves children aged 8 to 12 from Borgo Valbelluna’s primary schools, introducing them to dynamic modelling as an educational tool as much as a sporting one: mechanics, electronics, hands-on skill, patience, and engaging with others. At a time when an ever-larger share of young people’s free time passes through a screen, building, adjusting, getting it wrong and starting again — together with other people — remains an experience worth offering.
One village, one gate, a miniature Europe
There are stories that repeat themselves more often than one might think across the Belluno area: sporting, cultural and social events that exist because someone, once their day job is done, starts another one — this time unpaid — for the simple pleasure of sharing a passion. Behind MyCandy Arena’s 339 metres are exactly these people: those who open the gates, prepare the pits, and solve the dozens of problems that inevitably come with every event.
From 2 to 4 October, when the nitro-powered engines of the Euro Nitro Series’s model cars take on the Lentiai straight, times, standings and champions will be decided. But the more important contest — introducing a small village in the Valbelluna to Europe — will already have been won.
MyCandy Arena Lentiai: useful information
The Euro Nitro Series weekend is open to the public. The full race schedule and all information on times, entries and services are available on the official MyCandy Arena website. For other sporting events in the Belluno area, see the Sport section of our magazine, while all the news concerning Lentiai is gathered on a single page.
— Al Mazaròl