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The Gold Coast Indy 300 was an open-wheel motor race event that took place at the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit in south east Queensland, Australia from 1991 to 2008. The challenging track had several fast sections and four chicanes. The event had various names during its history for sponsorship reasons; in its final year it was known as the Nikon Indy 300. The race had been an annual event since 1991 originally as part of the CART IndyCar World Series. Then, following the split between CART and the newly formed Indy Racing League (IRL) in 1996 and the subsequent dissolution of CART in 2003, as part of the Champ Car World Series. Following the merger of the Indy Racing League and Champ Car World Series in February 2008 the future of race had been secured until 2013 as an IRL IndyCar Series event, however the race was omitted from the 2009 IndyCar Series season calendar, and subsequently dropped by the IRL completely. In the first sixteen years of the event, there were sixteen different winners. In 2007 Sébastien Bourdais became the first driver to win the race twice, adding to his 2005 victory. ==History== The races early years were dogged by controversy as Australia's motor sport governing body the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS) initially refused to sanction the event. The Queensland State Government has been largely supportive of the event while the Gold Coast City Council support at local level has varied in its level of support, even occasionally openly hostile to the event. However, by the late 1990s the race had become a well attended and popular event on the Gold Coast calendar with tens of thousands of spectators attending each of the four days of the IndyCarnival. From 1991 to 1997, the Gold Coast Grand Prix was typically held in March, and several times served as the CART season opener. In 1996, the Australian Grand Prix (Melbourne) moved from the fall to the spring. It created an undesirable scheduling conflict which eventually saw the Gold Coast Grand Prix move permanently to October starting in 1998. In the 2002 event there was a frightening incident when a nine-car pile-up occurred at the start in very wet conditions – however no significant injuries were sustained. In 2003 a massive thunderstorm struck the area during the race, leading to a red flag. Again no injuries were sustained. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gold Coast Indy 300」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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