Posted Monday, April 09, 2007; 6:00 a.m.

The History of Long Beach's Most Prestigious Car Race
The 33rd annual Champ Car race will be in Long Beach from April 13 - 15. For now, we look at how this all began.

By Damian Dottore
The L.A. Pilot

In 1975, high powered race cars began speeding around the streets of downtown Long Beach, which at the time were surrounded by boarded up buildings and urban blight.

It was Chris Pook’s idea. He was a racing fan with a big idea, someone who loved his hometown, a travel agent who wanted this beach community just south of us to be a destination for world travelers, not the butt of every joke.

A street race, he believed, could do just that. And even though there were times that year when Pook wondered if the course would ever get completed and if people would ever show up, 45,000 fans watched Brain Redman win the F5000 race in Jim Hall’s T-332 Lola.

Pook did it. More than 60,000 made the trip to the beach next year, and in 1977, his race would become a part of American racing history.

Mario Andretti won the race, now featuring the glamorous globe-trotting stars of Formula One, becoming the first American driver to pull into victory lane at the United States Grand Prix.

Until 1984, the most sophisticated racing machines in the world called Long Beach their American home, that’s when the CART, the series now known as the Champ Car World Series, took over.

It was a gamble for sure. Formula One was filled with history and tradition, names that fans everywhere had heard of.

CART, on the other hand, was just starting out, but financial concerns drove Pook to make the change.

But would his race still have that mystique that was making this event one of the premier street-course races in the world?

But a familiar name sped to the front of the field and suddenly it didn’t seem to matter what cars were speeding down Shoreline. Dr. Andretti was in first when the checkered flag flew.

Since then Long Beach and the Champ Car World Series have grown together.

Think of one and the other automatically comes to mind. Thanks in part to CART, its Champ Cars, huge corporate sponsors and fancy skyscrapers slowly started to replace the seedy adult theaters lining Ocean Boulevard.

And Michael Andretti, Al Unser Jr., Alex Zanardi and Juan Pablo Montoya all launched into stardom after conquering these mean city streets, which has claimed the cars of some of the greatest drivers to ever climb behind the wheel.

This race has become the one to win on the Champ Car schedule, it’s Indy 500 so to speak, proof that great things can indeed come from very humble beginnings.

This year approximately 100,000 fans will converge on this seaside street course from April 13-15 to see who will be the next driver to take their place in Champ Car history as winner of the 33rd running of this prestigious race.