The race they said would never happen: the first Gold Coast Indy in 1991

This weekend the Supercars take over the streets of Surfers Paradise for the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500. The street circuit they race on began 35 years ago, with a race plenty of people said would never get off the ground.

The Gold Coast Indy in its final year, 2008. Photo: GrieSeb, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sunday 17 March 1991

John Andretti started the first Gold Coast Indy from ninth on the grid. With four laps to go, he was in front. As UPI reported that afternoon, "He inherited the lead four laps from the finish when leader Rick Mears ran up an escape road while lapping slower drivers." Andretti won by 12.7 seconds from Bobby Rahal, with Mears recovering to third. It was the only IndyCar win of his career.

It was a first for the sport, too. UPI called it "the first time Indy cars have raced a round of the CART series outside North America."

Getting to the grid

Motorsport's world governing body, FISA, refused to sanction the race, and Australia's own body, CAMS, wouldn't back it either. A rival promoter said the high-rises made it impossible to insure: "Can you imagine a drunken spectator on a unit balcony hurling a can through the windscreen of a car as it roars down the esplanade at 200kmh?"

The Queensland Government backed it anyway, putting in $1 million and guaranteeing $6.5 million over five years. Ron Dickson, seen at the time as the force behind the race, is credited with the circuit's design. Introducing the race's own law to Parliament in August 1990, Treasurer Keith De Lacy called it "the first major event to be attracted to Queensland since the establishment of the Queensland Events Corporation."

Building a racetrack through a city

The circuit ran for about 4.5 km along the beachfront, through Main Beach and Surfers Paradise. In November 1990, four months out, the road works and resurfacing were still underway. CART's technical director, Kirk Russell, was already impressed: "The design of the safety barriers which will surround the track also is excellent."

The Indy Car Grand Prix Act 1990 let the promoter build the circuit on public streets for the event, then hand them back, with any damage repaired. That's the job, then and now. A race circuit gets designed, built and signed off around shops, residents and traffic, in a city that keeps running the whole time.

See the track on the Friday before the first race, 15 March 1991, in the Queensland State Archives collection.

The people behind it

iEDM was founded by John Howe, one of Australia's leading motorsport circuit engineers. Before iEDM, John ran Weathered Howe, a local Gold Coast engineering business based in Southport, which he led from 1976. It grew to around 100 engineers and designers, and the Gold Coast Indy was one of its valued projects. Some members of today's iEDM team have worked on the annual race event ever since and have experienced its evolution over the years.

From the long lap to a faster build

Since 2009, iEDM has engineered and project-managed the Gold Coast street race. In 2010 the famous 4.5 km lap was shortened, which cut construction time by 30%. Together with a review of how the circuit is built, it saves the event about $1 million a year, on a site that can't close down at any point during the build, with around 4,000 residents living inside the precinct.

Today's circuit is 2.96 km, and this weekend it opens the Repco Supercars Finals. Same streets and the same beach, with a very different build behind them. See you trackside.

Sources: UPI, 17 March 1991. The Canberra Times, 23 March 1990 and 23 November 1990. Queensland Hansard, 1 August 1990. Queensland Parliament tabled paper 5001T1770 (2001). iEDM.