IndyCar: The Five Best International Venues

Surfers Paradise

The south Pacific has been a hotbed of talent for IndyCar in modern times. Champions like Will Power from Australia and Scott Dixon from New Zealand lead the list of drivers making the move from Oceania to racing in the United States. At one point, American open-wheel racing made a yearly pilgrimage to Australia to race on the Gold Coast, but could those exciting days be revived?

The Gold Coast Indy 300 began as a CART race in 1991, and carried over to Champ Car through 2007. When the series merged in unification with IndyCar, the race at Surfers Paradise carried on as a non-championship race in 2008. However, the race’s history with the IRL was short-lived, being dropped from the calendar in 2009.

In June 2016, reports surfaced from Australia that a consortium was working to bring IndyCar back to the Gold Coast in the near future. Speculation put the event as a possible addition for October 2017, but it was not added to the calendar. In fact, multiple hurdles will need to be cleared in order to see Surfers Paradise back on the schedule.

Later in the history of the Gold Coast 300, Champ Car split the billing with the Australian V8 Supercars, an unprecedented move at the time. After the demise of the IndyCar race at Surfers, the V8 Supercars have had exclusive rights to race there. That deal continues until 2019. Furthermore, infrastructure improvements have caused the street circuit to be condensed in size, likely not ideal for IndyCar use.

If the Gold Coast is not an option, there are other places in Australia that could serve well to host IndyCar. Places like Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney could all host the open-wheelers of America in the future, and IndyCar would be smart to have the Aussies in their plans.