The former military underground air base at Zeljava at the border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina will be repurposed as a motorsport race track, the Vecernji List daily reported.

This September the facility will be used as a venue for a 402 Street Race contest for cars of +1500 horsepower.

Croatian speed car driver Darko Konopek was quoted as saying that the Zeljava race track could make it possible for drivers to speed up to 500 kilometres per hour.

The organiser of the 24-25 September race contest, Zlatko Ruzic, said that the events during the two-day “Balkans Finest Competition” would be the Street Race, the Drift show, the Drift taxi, the Tuning & Styling and the dB race.

Ruzic expects more than a thousand vehicles to swarm the Croatian region of Lika for this occasion.

Zeljava Air Base, situated under the Pljesevica mountain, was the largest underground airport and military air base in the former Yugoslavia, and one of the largest in the world.

On 16 May 1992, the retreating Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) used 50 tonnes of explosives in a bid to destroy all the five runways, while its units were leaving the site.