Toronto, Mont-Tremblant, Edmonton: Triple Crown In Canada

EDMONTON, Alberta — The Grand Prix Edmonton is showing signs of staying power, and it remains the most popular race in Champ Car’s three-event Canadian Triple Crown.
Edmonton organizers announced a three-day attendance of 167,152, a three-percent decline from last year and down 17 percent from the inaugural 2005 event, when more than 200,000 fans passed through the turnstiles.
This year, the Saturday crowd came within 400 of the race-day attendance, which was pegged at 60,508. The 47,000 capacity grandstands appeared about 85-percent full.
“This is only our third year, so it's tough to get a handle on what your fan base is going to be,” GPE president Jim Haskins told the Edmonton Journal. “We were confident people were going to be here, and we were right.
“Edmonton showed the world we're able to throw a pretty good three-day party,” he added. “It couldn't be better.”
Actually, it could, with stronger support from Edmonton’s corporate community. Drugstore chain Rexall was a late addition as the event’s title sponsor.
“On one hand, we have arguably the fastest track, the most challenging track and the best sight lines of any track, but we also have the highest costs,” Haskins said. “Our budget is well over $10 million.”
Haskins added that he hopes the event will turn a profit for the first time in 2008.

• Racing legend Mario Andretti served as the grand marshal for this year’s Grand Prix Edmonton.
“I’ve had so many good times in Canada,” Andretti related. “I’ve been racing here since 1963, in midgets. So many different cars. Edmonton was on the Formula 5000 schedule, but I never got to race here.
“I’m not surprised at the success of this event because Canadians are avid motor racing fans,” he added. “The ambience here is what you want.”
 Andretti said the highlight of his weekend was giving rides to passengers in the Minardi F1x2 car. His most notable fare was his old friend Paul Newman.
“As soon as they said ‘You can drive the two-seat (F-1) car,’ that was the clincher,” Andretti said. “I keep my hand in. I’ll be driving something until I’m in the grave.”
The 67-year-old Andretti spun the car three times during his Friday practice session and joked that he was testing the traction control. Mario hasn’t completely ruled out a competitive return to the track.
“Of course, I’m looking at Newman, so I have 15 more years and I’m not giving up,” he said, referring to the 82-year-old former actor. “He was fourth in his class last weekend at Lime Rock. He qualified sixth and said, ‘I’m slow as a snail. I wish I was 81 again.’”
 
•Two out of every three lucky fans who won or paid for the privilege of a two-seater ride got a driver named Mario at Edmonton. Mario Dominguez joined Mario Andretti in the three-car lineup, along with regular Minardi F1x2 shoe Zsolt Baumgartner.
 
• Dominguez was drafted into regular racing duty when PKV Racing’s Tristan Gommendy sustained a pair of minor vertebrae fractures in a Friday qualifying incident. Gommendy spun at turn seven and hit the wall head-on at about 40 miles per hour.
The impact — and the injury — was very similar to what Paul Tracy suffered in practice earlier this year at Long Beach. The latest accident seems to confirm that Champ Car has some work to do on the Panoz DP01 spec chassis to diffuse impact forces, particularly in straight-on collisions.
Dominguez’s Cosworth engine started sounding sour about 10 laps into the Edmonton race, and it lasted only 32 laps before letting go.
 
• Minardi Team USA had its worst weekend of the 2007 season, with Dan Clarke’s eighth-place finish as the highlight.
Robert Doornbos entered the Edmonton weekend leading the Champ Car standings, but the Dutchman failed to make his usual Saturday improvement and wound up 11th on the grid. He was classified in that finishing position as well after being taken out by the lapped car of Alex Tagliani.
“It was a very difficult race, and I’m glad that it’s over,” said Doornbos, who dropped 20 points behind race winner and three-time series champion Sebastien Bourdais. “We figured things out a bit too late in the weekend.”
 
• Forsythe Championship Racing was happy to salvage fifth and sixth place in the race after Paul Tracy and Oriol Servia were only able to qualify on the sixth row.
Tracy took a fortunate win at Cleveland but has generally not been on the pace in 2007, and after landing the Forsythe gig at mid-season, Servia hasn’t fared much better.
“We made huge changes to the car overnight, and we really didn’t know what to expect today,” Tracy admitted. “So, we kind of came blindfolded into the race and got a top five, which is very good considering where we started.”