(Author: ikom Sunday July 17, 2005,
Jul,17,2005Jul,17,2005
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Saturday Sunday July 16, & 17, 2005
This is the weekend of the inaugural Edmonton Grand Prix hence very little work on the ULTIMA.
I normally fly out to Vancouver, British Columbia, and sit in the grandstand at the end of the front straight as it empties into turn one, together with about 80-100 friends and acquaintances to take in this race almost every year. Great to sit together with the same people every year, swap stories, pick up conversations and relationships from the year before and enjoy race weekend in a community atmosphere.
This year we have it in our own backyard; Vancouver gave it up and we - Edmonton - picked it up for the next three years with an option for a further three years if it works out. There was a lot of talk as to whether we could pull it off in a city of just 850,000 people but this is a city of sports fans and real race enthusiasts.
Well, pull it off we did - an all time record attendance for Canada of over 200,000 and a phenomenal racetrack constructed on our (secondary) City Centre Airport site. Not a bad seat in the house and thanks to the hundreds of volunteers the organization was seamless. The National papers had this to say.
"Drench yourselves in champagne, Edmonton. First time out and you made your mark as the City of Champ Car with flair and panache and an eye-popping 200,052 racing fans at the City Centre Airport track".
"Organizers pulled off the inaugural West Edmonton Mall Grand Prix like they'd been running it for 25 years, not scrambling since last December to pull the massive logistical puzzle together".
The race was won by Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, who shared the podium with Oriol Servia and Paul Tracy.
The ULTIMA received very little attention, because of the race, but I did manage to pull apart a broken plastic eye hook that secures the door shock to the door hinge and to fabricate a slightly more robust version out of aluminum even though the factory (Ted) promised to mail me a replacement. I emailed the factory when I discovered the broken plastic end piece and Ted kindly offered to replace it.
I still haven't solved the under dash speaker bracket dilemma - I hope to work on this during the week if I have some spare time.
