Motorsports

Area shines in promoters' eyes

The Grand Prix of St. Petersburg continued to justify its place on the local and Indy Racing League calendars with what promoters considered a third consecutive successful event and another "great" crowd. Though Andretti Green Promotions does not release attendance figures, race managing director Kevin Savoree said sales were up.

By BRANT JAMES
Published April 3, 2007

The Grand Prix of St. Petersburg continued to justify its place on the local and Indy Racing League calendars with what promoters considered a third consecutive successful event and another "great" crowd. Though Andretti Green Promotions does not release attendance figures, race managing director Kevin Savoree said sales were up.

That's impressive, especially considering a major, well-established air show was held at the same time at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

Within the next few weeks, the city, title sponsor Honda, the IRL and AGP will huddle to determine when and if the event will return now that its initial three-year contract has expired. The promoters have an option that expires May 1 to extend the contract two years and Savoree said it is his intention to race here "for many, many years to come."

"I'm a pretty persistent guy, and I'm confident I can make that happen," he said when reached by phone on Monday.

Savoree said he hopes to retain the first Sunday in April as the race date.

"We certainly as a promoter place a lot of value on date equity," he said. "It's our wish to retain it. But there's a lot of pieces to the puzzle, and we want to be a good partner. If the city said that doesn't work, we would want to work with them on that."

DON'T BREAK IT: "Termite" brought it home in one piece again.

Seems Helio Castroneves has a bit of a reputation with his Team Penske engineers for being tough on the equipment, and in an odd twist, he gets harder on it as the race gets easier.

"Normally I'm a right-foot braker," he said. "That means you use the clutch to downshift. Sometimes when you're not synchronized with the downshift, you can do damage. If you do that too many times, you end up wearing out the gears and can possibly break the gears. That's why you start having problems in the downshift.

"My nickname inside the team actually is 'Termite'. I can destroy a gearbox pretty nicely."

Good thing, he said, he had street racing veterans Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan pressing him on Sunday at the end of his second straight Grand Prix of St. Petersburg victory.

"I know what I have to do to prevent (doing damage). But sometimes when I have the big lead I kind of relax," he said. "That's probably the time that I do damage because I'm just downshifting easily and not so much focused. That's why I'm glad when Scott was right there. I'm like, 'Okay, now I have to do exactly the same way every lap.' "

FINAL GP THOUGHTS: For whatever reason - the new 3.5-liter engines, the multitudes of tire compounds used by the IRL and American Le Mans Series or something else - the 1.8-mile course was fast and tricky. For this year, at least, it became one of the circuit's most challenging.

- With full frontstretch grandstands at the season opener at Homestead-Miami Speedway and a media-estimated 35,000 here on Sunday, the IRL has begun the season with some momentum.

- Los Lobos are just a bunch of regular guys. But cool.

[Last modified April 2, 2007, 23:11:28]