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For
Immediate Release
Contact: Jody Meacham, 408 / 288-2934, jody@sjsa.org
SAN JOSE (July 31, 2005) – The
inaugural Taylor Woodrow Grand Prix of San José burst
onto the Northern California sports scene this weekend
with perhaps the highest attendance ever for a San
Jose sports event.
The three-days of auto racing through
San Jose’s
city streets – highlighted by Frenchman Sebastien
Bourdais’ victory in the Champ Car World Series
race – drew 153,767 fans, according to race officials.
“It was a fantastic culmination of two years’ work
by the city and the San Jose Sports Authority,” said
Dean Munro, the Sports Authority’s executive
director. “The race showcased our city before
a national television audience in a way that has never
happened before, and the fan support was overwhelming.”
“We had a great first event,” said Dick
Eidswick, Champ Car president, who has reoriented the
open-wheel racing series toward three-day racing festivals
in international cities. “We look forward next
year to coming back to an even better event. This is
the very image of the kind of events we’re trying
to spawn all over the world.”
An announced crowd of 62,371 saw
Sunday’s
finale in which Bourdais won the Champ Car race from
the pole
and Katherine Legge from Silverstone, England won her
third race of the season in the Toyota Atlantic Series.
“The first thing I want to say is thumbs up
for the people here in San Jose,” said Spain’s
Oriol Servia, third-place finisher to Bourdais.
Canadian
Paul Tracy, runner-up to Bourdais in the main event,
said the inaugural San Jose appearance
on the Champ Car circuit was “a great success
for the city. The buzz in the city was great, being
right downtown. It was a great festival event.”
Track
workers labored through the weekend fine-tuning the
layout to suit drivers and to handle the larger-than-expected
turnout of fans.
Conceding that officials had underestimated
the huge turnout, Bob Singleton, race general manager,
promised
more pedestrian bridges for next year’s race
to accommodate fans seeking to enjoy the festival events
at the McEnery Convention Center and elsewhere in the
interior of the 1.4-mile race course.
“We turned the inside of this race track into
a three-day festival,” Singleton said. “The
first thing I’ll say is next year there will
be more bridges. We’re sorry for the frustrations
of some fans. We will learn, and there will be less
frustration next year.”
The San Jose Sports Authority is
the sports marketing agency for the City of San José. Since its creation
in 1991, the Sports Authority has brought more than
150 events to the city including six NCAA Championships,
the NHL and MLS All Star Games and the U.S. Figure
Skating Championships. Visit us on the Web at www.sjsa.org.
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