The City of Long Beach council made a wise move in approving the three-year contract extension to ensure that the marquee street circuit race in North America – the Grand Prix of Long Beach – remains a part of the IndyCar Series until at least 2018.
Behind the mighty spectacle of the Indianapolis 500, the Toyota Grand Prix is the biggest event on the schedule. Losing it would almost certainly be the beginning of the end for open-wheel racing in North America, at least in its current form.
As much a foundation of IndyCar as the Indy 500 itself, the race around the 1.968 mile street circuit alongside Long Beach and the mammoth convention centre has revitalised the city, turning it into something of a tourist destination.
Before the first open-wheel race, the United States West Grand Prix, which ran first as a Formula 500 event from 1976 to 1983 and then as a part of the Formula One World Championship before IndyCar took over in 1984, Long Beach was run down; close to the bright lights of Los Angeles, but not close enough to draw tourists out to the sea.
Chris Pook, the genius who had the idea of putting on a race on the streets back in the 1970s, now looks like a racing visionary, but he’s recently been in the news because he is trying to lure Formula One back to Long Beach. He’s gone on record as saying that he’s had discussions with Bernie Ecclestone, who pulls the purse strings of the world’s most popular and prestigious motor racing series.
In the face of that talk, the Long Beach City Council did the smart thing in unanimously approving the three-year extension. It represents a pretty big blow to Pook’s (and Ecclestone’s) ambitions to bring Formula One back to the beach, which is a great thing for both the event and for IndyCar.
It seems the people at Long Beach’s City Hall have paid close attention to the way that Ecclestone runs Formula One – specifically the debacle that the proposed New Jersey street race has become.
Will that race ever happen? I doubt it. They’re also probably looking at the F1 sanction fee as opposed to the IndyCar sanction fee. It’s the safest of safe bets that the two aren’t even in the same universe.
Why change a good thing? IndyCar took a well-attended Formula One event and turned it into one of the biggest races on the motorsports calendar. There is a solid set of support events – the United Sports Car Series and Indy Lights chief among them, plus the popular celebrity race – and crowds flock to the track in their thousands each year.
Sure, there isn’t the same attendance as in the glory days of IndyCar, but the Toyota Grand Prix is still one of the more well-populated races anywhere in the world.
Bring Formula One in and you’re looking at changing a lot of the circuit to suit those cars, which takes away from the character of the track. That character, of course, is what makes Long Beach so challenging and so tough to win.
There’s a reason why some of the best drivers in the history of IndyCar have won at Long Beach. It isn’t easy, and takes great skill because of the nature of the circuit.
If Formula One comes to town, say goodbye to the bumpy, rough, hard-to-drive track. You can instead look forward to yearly repaves, because Formula One cars wouldn’t survive a lap on the track’s current surface. That costs money, of course, and I wonder in what other ways event organisers might have to reconfigure the track. Would the famous fountain turn survive? What would happen to that final long, slow hairpin?
Formula One street races are generally parades, with very little passing taking place outside of the first lap or in the pits. Fans at Long Beach are used to seeing terrific racing. In 2014 (and, indeed, for the previous few years) the on-track product, from IndyCar right down through the supports, has been nothing short of sensational.
You come to Long Beach each April and you just know the racing is going to be as memorable as the weather. Why would you abandon that for what most likely will be a snoozer of a Formula One race? You give up on-track action, and pay a couple of large fortunes more for the pleasure.
Ticket prices would almost certainly rise, and fans will vote with their feet if things aren’t as they’re used to. All of a sudden, those bills get harder to pay.
The Long Beach City Council is on a good thing here. The Toyota Grand Prix works perfectly as it currently is. Why mess with it?
Don’t take the mercenary road. Be smart. Do what’s best by your fans. We’re the lifeblood of your great race after all.
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