Start low. Aim high.
That’s the philosophy of Michael Andretti as he and his Andretti Green promotions partners work - and yes, they’re working right up to the last minute - to kick-start an Indy car race through the streets of Toronto that wasn’t here a year ago and had really seen better days starting back about 2002.
In its heyday during the late 1980s and ‘90s, the Molson Indy was a highlight of Toronto’s summer sporting and social season. The best open-wheel racing series (Championship Auto Racing Teams, or CART) featuring the best and most famous drivers of Indianapolis-type cars (Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Emerson Fittipaldi, Danny Sullivan, Al Unser Jr., et al) would descend on Toronto in July and there would be black-tie galas and City Hall receptions. The downtown bar and restaurant business would boom and hotels would be jam-packed with out-of-towners.
If those days are to return, it will be thanks to Andretti and the new (to Toronto) generation of drivers he brings along, high on energy and excitement.
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Andretti emphasized that it isn’t the Molson Indy anymore, it’s the much different Honda Indy. Instead of Mario Andretti there’s Marco Andretti. Yes, the Mansells and Fittipaldis and Unsers have all retired, but they’ve been replaced by a new generation of stars: Dario Franchitti, Helio Castroneves and Danica Patrick.
Patrick is almost as well known for her swimsuit layouts in Sports Illustrated and her dot-com commercials on television as she is for her racing skills but she is no shrinking violet on the race track. She finished third in this year’s Indianapolis 500 and sits fifth in the series standings. At the Long Beach Grand Prix earlier this season, a street course similar to Toronto’s, she was a fighting fourth.
Although her contract with Andretti Green is up at the end of this season and there have been suggestions she might jump to NASCAR, Andretti is hopeful she’ll re-sign with his team.
“This is the Honda Indy and it’s going to be bigger and better than the Molson Indy,” Andretti said. “We don’t want to equal what it used to be, we want to make it better than whatever it’s been. Even if you’re not a race fan, we want you to come down because you’re still going to have fun. That’s what we’re striving for. If you come down, everywhere you walk there’s going to be something going on and something to do.”
Several of the established CART teams - Marlboro Team Penske, Target Chip Ganassi, Rahal-Letterman Racing and Adrian Fernandez Racing - had bolted to the rival Indy Racing League.
All of a sudden, a show that featured anywhere from 24 to 26 quality cars and drivers every time it came to town was down to 18 cars and many of the drivers were less than A-grade.
And there was something else. Shortly after David Miller became mayor of Toronto in 2003, the city moved its Celebrate Toronto Street Festival - a free, weekend-long party featuring entertainment and food up and down Yonge St. - to the same weekend as the Indy. It could have been a coincidence (the mayor is not exactly a Car Guy) but this served to essentially kill much of the race-day walkup crowd.
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After the 20th edition of the race in 2005, Molson put the property on the market. Kevin Kalkhoven, one of three partners in the Champ Car World Series sanctioning body that emerged in 2004 after CART went bankrupt, purchased the event (essentially to keep it out of the IRL’s hands) and renamed it the Grand Prix of Toronto.
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