Champ Car Promotion

[Tifosi24]

I am totally shocked, but Justin Wilson was just on the local sports segment trying to pimp the race next weekend. That is a shocker because there has been very little in the way of promotion for the coming race weekend.

Admirals might be hosting Game 1 of the Calder Cup finals, so if Champ Car were smart they would try to get some presence at the Bradley Center before the race.

[Anteater]

Good news about Justin; bad news about the lack of promotion. :(

[oddlycalm]

We've seen good things happen in Portland from the Business Council that was formed to work on sponsorship development at all levels, with Chevron being the biggest of the new sponsors. The promotion efforts have been the strongest in memory and started back in February.

The latest promotion is a half hour TV preview show that will air in heavy rotation and will also be available free On Demand. :thumbup:

Northwest auto racing fans can get an eyeful of Champ Car racing action by watching the G.I. Joes presents Champ Car Grand Prix of Portland Preview Show.

The half-hour program will air on CNW 14 (Comcast cable) in Western Oregon and Southwest Washington several times beginning today, May 26 at 6:30pm. The program can also be accessed at any time by Comcast Digital Cable subscribers through Comcast On Demand service (Channel 1).

Hosted by Bob Akamian, the “Voice” of Portland International Raceway, the preview show takes the viewer inside this year’s Champ Car World Series with driver interviews, tech talk and a look back at the dramatic moments from the history of this race.

This is the 23rd consecutive year the Champ Cars have made their only Pacific Northwest appearance at Portland International Raceway (June16-17-18). Portland is one of 15 stops world wide on the Champ Car World Series.

The past 4 series champions will be in the field including Sebastien Bourdais, Paul Tracy and defending Portland champion Cristiano Da Matta.

Also featured is the Trinity Carpet 100K race for the Champ Car Atlantics Series. Up to 30 up and coming racers compete in this feeder series which this year features a two million dollar bonus prize.

The show will also be available on other Comcast VOD locations around the Northwest. Those markets will be announced at a later date

The Champ Car Preview show is scheduled on CNW14 (Comcast Northwest Channel 14) at the following dates/times:

5/26 6:30pm
5/27 9:30am
5/28 7:30am
6/2 6:00pm
6/3 9:30am
6/3 11:00pm
6/4 5:00pm
6/6 9:00pm
6/11 5:30pm
6/15 6:30pm

The Champ preview will be available ON DEMAND on 5/29. Comcast digital cable customers can view it anytime by tuning to channel 1- local programs – CNW14 - sports.

[Anteater]

Very cool! I'd like a copy of that show, oc. :)

[SurfaceUnits]

MONTREAL, May 29 /CNW Telbec/ - Alan Labrosse, the promoter and
rights-holder of the Montreal Champ Car race, is pleased to invite media
representatives to a news conference announcing important details regarding
the 2006 edition of the event.
At this time, two of the principal owners of the Champ Car World Series,
Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerald Forsythe, will be on hand to discuss Montreal's
place of prominence in the championship.
Canadian drivers Alexandre Tagliani and Andrew Ranger, who are looking
forward to racing again in front of a home crowd, will also be in attendance
to share their feelings about the event which will be presented Aug. 25-27 on
the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve.

<<
DATE: Wednesday, May 31, 2006

TIME: 1:30 p.m.

PLACE: Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth
Salon St-Francois (lobby level)
900 Rene-Levesque Blvd. West
Montreal
>>

[nrc]

MONTREAL, May 29 /CNW Telbec/ -
At this time, two of the principal owners of the Champ Car World Series,
Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerald Forsythe, will be on hand to discuss Montreal's
place of prominence in the championship.Hmmm. How about plans for next year.

[SurfaceUnits]

The Montreal Saga: CCF (http://www.champcarfanatics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=668859#post668859)

[CART T. Katz]

do i really have to go there to find out or can someone give us a cliff notes version?

[SurfaceUnits]

u can go 2 marxies site, I know ur going to find this hard to believe but, he stole it from somebody and the ccf folks stoled it from him.

[cameraman]

If Kalkhoven and Forsythe are both going to be standing in front of a microphone it has to be good news whatever it may be. Owners don't deliver bad news personally.

[SurfaceUnits]

The OWnRS now own the Montreal race. :eek:

[SurfaceUnits]

Heading for pits?
champ car is revving up its publicity engines for its Aug. 27 race here, and a nasty dispute between the series and local promoters could see the popular Formula One race gone


DAVE STUBBS, The Gazette
Published: Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Motor racing revs up in Montreal today, without the roar of a single engine and more than three weeks before Formula One's Canadian Grand Prix.

And it's F1 racing whose future here seems threatened by a dispute in which it's not even directly involved.

The Champ Car World Series starts the ignition of publicity today for its fifth Montreal race. Series co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven will join president Steve Johnson, race promoter Alan Labrosse and Quebec driving stars Alexandre Tagliani and Andrew Ranger at an afternoon news conference.

They'll talk about their Aug. 27 event on Ile Notre Dame's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. But their more important message will be to hail Montreal's place in Champ Car racing, and how they hope to make it a long-term destination.

Champ Car's deal to race on the Expo 67 island expires this year. So, too, does Formula One promoter Normand Legault's contract with the city for exclusive racing use of the site.

It is expected that Mayor Gerald Tremblay will soon sign another lease with Legault. But Legault has little interest in bringing back Champ Car unless it's as a support event to NASCAR, with whom he has a deal all but concluded to present a Busch Series stock-car race here next summer.

(In a sport fuelled by rumours, one floated out of the Indy 500 last weekend had a reunited Champ Car and Indy Racing League series, not a done deal by any stretch, headlining a Montreal doubleheader, with a Busch race in support. Don't bet even an oil change on that.)

Legault took a pass on organizing this summer's Champ Car race, which since its first edition here in 2002 has slipped in popularity, weekend attendance falling from a first-year 172,000 to only 93,755 last summer.

It's become an ugly, personal affair. Some in Champ Car have charged that Legault sabotaged last year's race with poor grandstand placement and by welcoming NASCAR officials the same weekend. An influential team principal said after the race that Legault should have been jailed for his role in the event.

"The Champ Car people were quite incensed (by NASCAR's presence)," Legault said recently. "But NASCAR is their competitor in the U.S. They are not my competitor for the F1 product, and my aim as a promoter is to provide Montrealers with the best product out there."

And Legault sees stock cars as night to F1's day, a totally different, proven brand of racing with a solid, crowd-pleasing future.

He sold to Labrosse his company that held rights to this year's Champ Car race and to the series in Montreal for the next decade.

Labrosse, who also staged the 2004 event, said in a Journal de Montreal story on the weekend that he wouldn't have bought the rights had he realized he would not have future access to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. But Legault maintains it's clear to all that he needs exclusive control of the site to fulfill his contractual obligations to F1 head Bernie Ecclestone.

Legault's contract with Ecclestone, renewed through 2011, stipulates that he must provide any racing date that F1 desires. Montreal's traditional mid-June slot can change at Ecclestone's whim, as it did to June 25 this year to avoid conflict with soccer's World Cup.

Should the city interpret Labrosse's deal with Legault as one that also provides Labrosse with use of Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, not merely the right to organize a Champ Car race in the city, then Ecclestone, without an exclusivity guarantee, can pull the plug on Montreal.

In effect, the city would trade F1 racing for Champ Car.

Legault's exclusivity clause is nothing new. Labatt's, the Canadian Grand Prix's first promoter, built the Ile Notre Dame track for the inaugural 1978 race. In the mid-1980s, Molson sought to bring Indy-car racing to the circuit, and Labatt's suggested it

hadn't spent millions to build a world-class venue to help promote a rival brewer. The Indy-cars raced for three years at Sanair in St. Pie.

There are other concerns.

"F1 now is such a big risk, financially and technically, that you must control all the parameters," Legault said. "If anyone could use the circuit for a race, and their operating standards aren't as high as ours and there's a fatal accident, it would impact our own insurance policy. Companies could say they won't insure the circuit at all."

There's probably no reason why Champ Car couldn't run elsewhere in Montreal if the city would have them on the streets - as done this year in Toronto, Long Beach, Houston, San Jose, Denver and Surfers Paradise, Australia - or beyond city limits, as was done at Sanair.

Canada's third Champ Car stop, the hugely popular Edmonton Grand Prix, returns for its second edition on a temporary road course fashioned out of runways at a municipal airport.

Meanwhile, NASCAR is quietly optimistic as it awaits a resolution.

One high-profile Busch Series team is planning a scouting trip to Montreal this summer to study Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and explore the logistics of racing here next year.

The team's manager told The Gazette that, while NASCAR last week wouldn't confirm to him a Montreal race, it also didn't discourage him from coming north to do some homework.

Elsewhere, NASCAR legend Rusty Wallace, now motorsport analyst for ABC and ESPN TV and owner of a Busch Series team, says: "Montreal would be great. We need to be in Canada, it should have been on NASCAR's radar long ago."

So now this is on the mayor's plate. And no matter how he pushes it around with his fork, it's still a dog's breakfast, an unappetizing mess he'd happily scrape into the trash if it didn't come served with millions of tourist dollars.

dstubbs@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/sports/story.html?id=45c24b45-631e-4fb6-ae4c-5643ccec6c15

[SurfaceUnits]

Fifth edition of Champ Car Grand Prix of Montreal: accessible, affordable and charitable!
New stadium seating feature will put racing fans in the heat of the
action

MONTREAL, May 31 /CNW Telbec/ - Racing fans will be closer than ever to
the action when the fifth edition of the Champ Car Grand Prix of Montreal is
presented on the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve road course, August 25-27.
"The Champ Car race in Montreal has always been extremely fan-friendly,
and we want to make this year's edition even more accessible and affordable,"
said race promoter Alan Labrosse at a news conference today outlining plans
for the 2006 event. "We are introducing a seating configuration which we
believe will provide fans with a different perspective and further enhance the
experience of watching North America's premier open-wheel racing series."
Fans purchasing tickets in the Senna curve for this year's race will be
75 feet closer to the action than they have ever been for any type of
open-wheel racing on Ile Notre-Dame as organizers introduce stadium-style
seating, which will offer a truly unique vantage point. The three-day
Senna stadium package includes a Champ Car paddock pass and on Friday and
Saturday permits the holder to move from grandstand to grandstand, and watch
on-track activities from any available seat.
The other novelty in the seating configuration, which involves the
start-finish grandstand, is remarkable in more ways than one. Three-day passes
in this section, which also include paddock access, are available exclusively
at Wal-Mart stores throughout the province of Quebec. Wal-Mart, in partnership
with the Champ Car Grand Prix of Montreal, is donating one-third of the ticket
money to Opération Enfant Soleil, a non-profit organization devoted to
improving the quality of care for sick children.
"We are thrilled to see Wal-Mart Canada making such a bold statement of
support, not only to the event, but also to a great cause," said Labrosse. "I
believe people will really get behind the idea of purchasing a ticket, which
will be offered at a discount, knowing they are making a significant
contribution to a fund-raising initiative aimed at helping kids in need."
Kevin Kalkhoven, co-owner of the Champ Car World Series, who joined
Labrosse at the news conference, is confident that Labrosse and his team will
stage an event that will again showcase the city of Montreal to a worldwide
audience, including viewers of the NBC network, which is televising the race
live.
"The city of Montreal is one of the world's great sporting cities and
that love of sport makes it a coveted destination for Champ Car," remarked
Kalkhoven. "The hundreds of thousands of people who have enthusiastically
embraced Champ Car racing at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in the last four years
have seen close racing on one of the world's most fabled circuits and we look
forward to another great event in 2006."
In addition to being one of the most acclaimed events on the Champ Car
World Series schedule, the Montreal race is a homecoming for local drivers
competing in the series. That group includes Quebec racers Alex Tagliani and
Andrew Ranger, and long-time stalwart Paul Tracy, of Scarborough, Ontario.
Fans will also get a good look at talent in other series such as the Atlantic
Championship which will be one of the support events, with others to be
announced at a later date.
Tagliani, a well-established performer in the Champ Car World Series, has
raced in all four previous events in Montreal and knows from experience how
special it is to be able to compete in front of a home crowd.
"There is such a tremendous atmosphere surrounding the whole race
weekend," said Tagliani. "Fans who attend the Champ Car race in Montreal are
so passionate about the sport and they want to see you do well, I guess
because they regard us as their ambassadors internationally. But it's not just
the home-grown drivers who love racing in Montreal. Lots of other drivers have
told me they look forward to racing at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve."

Tickets for the Champ Car Grand Prix of Montreal go on sale today. A
three-day Senna stadium package is available for $169, while three-day seating
in the hairpin section of the track starts at $139. All three-day grandstand
tickets include a paddock pass. A three-day general admission ticket (no
reserved seating, no paddock access) is also available for $60.

The three-day start-finish grandstand package, sold exclusively in
Wal-Mart stores throughout Quebec is $81 and will be available as of June 12.

[Tifosi24]

The lack of promotion may be a killer for Milwaukee because this weekend is looking to be a gem. Low 70s with no chance of rain the last time I checked. Any competiting events are in the evenings, so there is no excuse there either.

[race chica]

The lack of promotion may be a killer for Milwaukee because this weekend is looking to be a gem. Low 70s with no chance of rain the last time I checked. Any competiting events are in the evenings, so there is no excuse there either.

And this is the first time in 5 years that I cant go to the race :( I'll be at RA though. Back from DC by then...

[JohnnyQ]

If Kalkhoven and Forsythe are both going to be standing in front of a microphone it has to be good news whatever it may be. Owners don't deliver bad news personally.

How these guys made there fortunes is beyond me? They can't market worth a *****.
I love Champcars concept. Having said that...it's un watchable. Bored-A is like watching paint dry. Tracy is a whining midpacker that inherited podium finishes once everybody left. Who cares about Wilson or Dinger? For Christ sake...merge with the IRL and bring open wheel back to some legitamcy. Former CART management blew it!!

Please knock my spelling if you're a master debator. :)

[RHR_Fan]

The lack of promotion may be a killer for Milwaukee because this weekend is looking to be a gem. Low 70s with no chance of rain the last time I checked. Any competiting events are in the evenings, so there is no excuse there either.

Except the Brewer game Sunday afternoon which starts around 1:00. But if they keep playing like they are right now maybe some people will attend the race instead.

~Nicole

[Tifosi24]

Who cares about the Brewers, they are terrible. The Predmirals in the Calder Cup finals is the real show in town. That is where I will be Friday and Saturday night, my friend who works at Miller was also talking about some kind of Riverfest as well, but hockey supercedes all.

[Dr. Corkski]

hockey supercedes all.+1

[racer2c]

What's 'hockey'?

Isn't that the sport that quite after Gretsky retired?

They should have some beach vollyball to get some fans back. No, really.

[TKGAngel]

What's 'hockey'?

Isn't that the sport that quite after Gretsky retired?

They should have some beach vollyball to get some fans back. No, really.

Hockey and Champcar are a lot alike. Both have a small but dedicated fanbase, a TV package that leaves much to be desired and a strong Canadian presence.

I would watch the NHL'ers play beach volleyball, but somehow I don't think that's what you had in mind. ;)

[Dr. Corkski]

Hockey and Champcar are a lot alike. Both have a small but dedicated fanbase, a TV package that leaves much to be desired and a strong Canadian presence.

I would watch the NHL'ers play beach volleyball, but somehow I don't think that's what you had in mind. ;)The Bible Belt to hockey is a lot like beach volleyball to Champ Car. Both have somehow deluded the people running the sport into thinking that they will somehow save the sport from eternal mediocrity.

[Ankf00]

The Stars manage to sell out, although things were rowdier at Reunion Arena, American Airlines Center is too open and not as rowdy

[TrueBrit]

The lack of promotion may be a killer for Milwaukee because this weekend is looking to be a gem. Low 70s with no chance of rain the last time I checked. Any competiting events are in the evenings, so there is no excuse there either.

Last time I was in Milwaukee was for the night race. I damn near froze to death....

Hoping the weather this Sunday is kinder than that.....

[SurfaceUnits]

How many Montreal restaurants serve grits, ham hocks, butter beans, hog jowls, corn bread, and Pabst - you know, for when the nascar gomers are in town. :gomer: