At its longest, the original Masaryk Circuit measured 29.194 km — an immense figure that placed it among the longest race circuits in the world at the time. The track ran anti-clockwise on public roads in the suburbs west of Brno, with the start and finish area located in the district of Bosonohy. From there, the route ran east past Kamenny before turning north past the Bohunice University Campus in Kejbaly, continuing through the villages of Libusino, Kohoutovice, and Zebetin, then out to Ostrovacice and through Veselka before returning to Bosonohy via a series of fast straights and high-speed kinks.
The circuit was entirely made up of ordinary public roads, closed for the duration of each race. Its character was shaped by the roads available: long stretches of open road through Moravian countryside alternating with tighter sections through villages, demanding a car capable of both sustained high-speed running and precise low-speed handling. Surfaces were uneven, barriers were minimal, and the width of the road varied considerably around the circuit.
From 1930 to 1937, the Masaryk Circuit races attracted some of the most prominent drivers and teams in European Grand Prix racing. The Czechoslovakian Grand Prix brought works teams from Alfa Romeo, Bugatti, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, and Auto Union to Brno, making it a genuine round of the prewar European championship.
The race held significant national symbolic importance. Czechoslovakia was one of the more prosperous and industrially developed of the new states formed after the First World War, and hosting a major Grand Prix event on a circuit bearing the name of the republic's founding president was a deliberate expression of national modernity and ambition. Crowds were consistently large, drawn from across the country to see the world's best drivers competing on roads they knew from everyday life.
The prewar Brno races produced results that reflected the broader competitive picture of 1930s Grand Prix racing. Early editions were contests between Bugatti and Alfa Romeo machinery, but as the decade progressed the works German teams — Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union, backed by state funding — began to dominate. Drivers including Rudolf Caracciola and Bernd Rosemeyer were among the German protagonists who performed at Brno during this period.
After the Second World War interrupted racing, the circuit was revived for the 1949 Czechoslovakian Grand Prix on 25 September 1949. This race used a shorter, clockwise layout of 17.800 km, turning right at Veselka and bypassing Ostrovacice, entering Zebetin from the south rather than the west. Despite drawing a crowd in excess of 400,000 people — an enormous attendance by any standard — this proved to be the last Grand Prix for cars on the original road circuit. The event was not incorporated into the nascent Formula One World Championship, which had begun in 1950, and the circuit's car racing chapter effectively closed with that 1949 race.
From 1950 onward the Masaryk Circuit redirected its focus to motorcycle racing, hosting the Czechoslovakian motorcycle Grand Prix. The circuit was progressively shortened over the following decades as the demands of motorcycle racing and improving safety standards made the full original length impractical. By 1964 the circuit had been reduced to 13.941 km, bypassing Zebetin entirely via a new through-road. A further reduction in 1975 brought it down to 10.921 km, with additional sections of the original route bypassed.
The circuit in its various shortened forms continued to host motorcycle world championship rounds from 1965 onward, as well as European touring car events in the 1980s. The original road sections used for the prewar and immediate postwar races remained in existence as public roads throughout this period.
In 1987 an entirely new permanent circuit of 5.403 km was opened north of Kyvalka, lying within the geographic bounds of the original road circuit but not incorporating any of its public roads. The motorcycle Grand Prix moved to this new facility and regained its world championship status. The modern circuit retained the Brno Circuit name and the historical Masaryk Circuit association, though the original prewar layout it commemorated had ceased to function as a race venue decades earlier.
The Masaryk Circuit represents an important chapter in central European motorsport history. Its scale, ambition, and the international quality of racing it attracted demonstrated that Grand Prix motorsport in the 1930s was not confined to the established venues of Western Europe. The decision to name the circuit after Czechoslovakia's founding president gave the venue a civic character that transcended sport, making it a statement about the new state's place in the modern world. The Brno name and the Masaryk legacy persisted through the modern permanent circuit that replaced the original roads, connecting the contemporary venue to its prewar origins.