Best-laid race plans leave room for improvement

Easter Sunday. Warm weather and the backyard swimming pool. Barbecuing with family and friends. Tiger Woods in the final pairing at the Masters. The Dodgers and Giants squaring off on TV -- for those more into historic baseball rivalries than historic golfing majors.

There were plenty of reasons Sunday to say, "Nah, I don't think so," when considering making a day of the inaugural Vegas Grand Prix, the season-opening Champ Car World Series race held on a course of repaved streets in downtown Las Vegas.

Oh, and you can throw in these reasons, too: a somewhat foreign sport with a lot of foreign names, and a field of 17 racers, eight of whom were making their series debuts.

Not exactly a "Hot damn, get me a ticket!" combination, you wouldn't think.

Still, "a bunch" and "a lot" of fans -- hey, those were the totals released by race officials afterward -- found a spot in one of the seven sets of bleachers along the 2.44-mile, handgun-shaped course stood behind two sets of protective fencing at key spots on city streets, or found rooftop perches to catch a glimpse of open-wheel race cars taking turns at 60 mph and opening up to as much as 180 mph on straightaways.

As race owners Dale Jensen and Brad Yonover effusively used terms such as "over the top" and "outstanding" to describe how their first-time event exceeded expectations, Las Vegas Grand Prix president Jim Freudenberg said late Sunday night that "more than 40,000" fans were on hand to watch Australia's Will Power win by a whopping 16.787 seconds over rookie Robert Doornbos of the Netherlands.

(Surely you've heard of those drivers, right?)

Considering other options for locals, and even for tourists staying downtown on a holiday weekend, 40,000 is an incredible number -- if, indeed, accurate.

When questioned about attendance right after the race -- especially the 70 percent-filled quarter-mile of grandstands at the start-finish line, Freudenberg was less than pleasant: "Your eyes are different than mine ..." he snipped. "We sold more tickets than that, I can tell you that."

Only race officials really know how many people attended -- but we would think city officials would want to know the paid attendance considering the impact/inconvenience on the downtown area for the past week.

But quibbling about attendance should not take us away from this significant point: This was a well-planned, well-organized, well-run first-time race, yet one with considerable room for improvement.

"Over the top" is considerably under the ceiling of realism, while "outstanding" is the equivalent of saying 7 a.m. strippers are way hot. You're stretching the definition of honesty a bit, fellas, while at the same time risking breaking your arms while patting yourselves on the back.

Sure, the drivers loved the course -- "beautifully smooth," Las Vegas resident and third-place finisher Paul Tracy said Sunday -- and the fans who sat in the bleachers were cheering as early as 10:15 a.m., when the Historic Grand Prix, a race for oldsters, took the starter's flag.

It was mostly a fun day. Mostly.

But lines for entry to course seating reportedly were long, getting to and from the downtown parking lots for the masses was a healthy hike and -- for crying out loud! -- couldn't somebody, anybody, THINK to erect a shaded covering over the main grandstand so that the estimated 70 percent who sat there weren't being exposed to a full day of sun?

By the time the Vegas Grand Prix was over, and the secondary Champ Car Atlantic Series was about to start, the main grandstand was at no more than 10 percent occupancy.

You wouldn't see that at a NASCAR Busch Series race.

"It's kind of like making a movie," Jensen, owner of the Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks, said of staging the event, which included three days of downtown partying. "You start off with what you think is a great script, and then you get the thing blocked and everybody ready to go and then you go shoot. And then you see if the magic happens.

"Did it happen (Sunday)? And it did happen."

Yes, just not to the degree you think it did, Martin Scorsese.

Joe Hawk is the Review-Journal's sports editor. He can be reached at 387-2912 or jhawk@reviewjournal.com.