Phillip Island Enduro hailed a success
September 17th 2008 00:55
The inaugural Phillip Island 500 km endurance race, held last weekend, has been hailed a crowd-pulling success by V8 Supercars Australia. Compared to the Sandown 500 last year, the 2008 L&H 500 pulled attendance figures of 54,929 over the three day event, 3802 more than last year’s 500 km race.
Despite the fact that the Phillip Island Grand Finale in 2007 managed to attract almost 68,000, V8 Supercars Australia Chairman, Tony Cochrane, is pleased with the numbers.
“Quite frankly we knew that when we took control of the 500, which had been diminishing under its previous promoter, let’s get the cards on the table, we knew it would take us time to rebuild it,” he stated.
“We wanted to move it here to Phillip Island; we’ve signed a 10 year deal, so we’re fair dinkum about it; we’re using our money and we know it’s going to take time to rebuild the 500 back to its prestigious state that it should be.
“And we’re delighted with the pre sales here this weekend; we’ve nearly sold out corporately; we’ve got a fantastic naming-rights sponsor, so we’ve made a very, very good start.
“But we’re not going to knock it on the head in one year.”
Cochrane believes three years is a good time period in which to build the event into something to rival any other and tap into the long-term potential of a Phillip Island endurance race meeting. He was also sanguine about a number of Australian MotoGP stands that were closed off to V8 Supercar fans at the weekend, due to the stands not yet being safety certified.
“I think by about 2011/2012 you’ll come here and this will be a very different scaled event to what it is today,” he said.
“It’s just a fact of life,” he said. “They sell about 20,000 grandstand seats. We pre-sold, I think, 2500.
“Clearly there’s grandstand seats that have to be built now… in time for that event, that we’re not using. But that’s ok, I mean that’s just a simple fact of the matter.”
Despite the fact that the Phillip Island Grand Finale in 2007 managed to attract almost 68,000, V8 Supercars Australia Chairman, Tony Cochrane, is pleased with the numbers.
Tony Cochrane, Chairman of V8 Supercars Australia
“We wanted to move it here to Phillip Island; we’ve signed a 10 year deal, so we’re fair dinkum about it; we’re using our money and we know it’s going to take time to rebuild the 500 back to its prestigious state that it should be.
“And we’re delighted with the pre sales here this weekend; we’ve nearly sold out corporately; we’ve got a fantastic naming-rights sponsor, so we’ve made a very, very good start.
“But we’re not going to knock it on the head in one year.”
Cochrane believes three years is a good time period in which to build the event into something to rival any other and tap into the long-term potential of a Phillip Island endurance race meeting. He was also sanguine about a number of Australian MotoGP stands that were closed off to V8 Supercar fans at the weekend, due to the stands not yet being safety certified.
“I think by about 2011/2012 you’ll come here and this will be a very different scaled event to what it is today,” he said.
“It’s just a fact of life,” he said. “They sell about 20,000 grandstand seats. We pre-sold, I think, 2500.
“Clearly there’s grandstand seats that have to be built now… in time for that event, that we’re not using. But that’s ok, I mean that’s just a simple fact of the matter.”
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