The circuit name is Exhibition Place and has a length of 2.90 kilometres (1.80 miles). The cars race around the track in a clockwise direction and there are 11 turns on the circuit. It is estimated that the top speed Indy cars could reach is 300 kilometres-per-hour (190 mph) on Lakeshore Boulevard.
The track is made of 5,000 metric tonnes of asphalt (approximately 340 truckloads) and was completed during May, 1996. There are 2,000 steel-reinforced concrete barriers, 12-feet long, 30 inches high, 20 to 24 inches wide and weighing 7,000 pounds each. In addition to the barriers there are 11,000 feet, 10 feet high, chain-link debris fences with three-strand half-inch steel cable and 19,000 feet, 6 feet high, chain-link spectator fences and 1600 feet of tire walls, five tires high. The Start/Finish area is between the Coliseum and Automotive Building, just west of Princes' Gates.
The Toronto circuit has entered its 12th year as one of the country's premier annual sporting events. Indy car racing through the streets of Toronto has become a summer tradition, but this event could be celebrating its 3Oth birthday if history had unfolded differently.
In 1968 the late John F. Basset Jr., whose father owned the Toronto Telegram, and former Sun Publishing executive Don Hunt, who was then in public relations, announced that they were going to create a race circuit on the Exhibition grounds and stage Indy car and Formula One events on an annual basis.
An appropriately named company, Lakeshore Raceway, was formed. The proposal called for a 3.7 kilometre circuit (the current layout is 2.90 km) with the Start/Finish line and pits located in Exhibition Stadium and using Lakeshore Blvd as the back straight.
Opposition to the plan came from three groups: (1) residents close to Exhibition Place who feared the noise and crowds would disrupt their neighbourhood; (2) Mosport Park, who at the time felt their business would suffer; and (3) those who opposed the use of a public facility by a private company.
Although many believe that racing didn't come to Toronto that year because of government resistance, the proposal had in fact won approval from each government level. It was a threat by the local ratepayers' association to seek a court injunction that persuaded Bassett and Hunt to scrap their plans.
The idea of racing at the Exhibition grounds resurfaced in 1975, ironically lead by Mosport Park. Mosport was the promoter of the Canadian Grand Prix at the time and felt that the magnitude and cost of staging the event had outgrown their facility. A race in downtown Toronto was an attractive proposition.
Like Bassett and Hunt before them though, Mosport's management ran smack into the local ratepayers' association. The Formula One race left Southern Ontario for the Montreal's Expo site in 1977, where it has remained.
In 1984 rights were acquired to stage CART races in Canada. Plans for staging a race in Toronto at Exhibition Place also began.
Determined to learn from the previous attempts, the organisers addressed the concerns of local residents and gained the necessary approval from all levels of government. On November26, 1985 a press conference was held to announce that Toronto would finally host a major league auto race. The first Toronto race took place on July 20, 1986 before a sold-out crowd of 60,000.
The phrase that was most often used to describe that first race in Toronto in 1986 was "an idea whose time had come" But perhaps Toronto Star sportswriter Frank Orr put it best in an article for that year's program describing the event as "an idea that took a very long time to get here."
Johnny Bassett's vision and efforts were acknowledged by the Board of Trustees in 1988 when they created the John F. Bassett Jr Award to "recognise a Canadian individual organisation or event which has made a significant contribution to the development and growth of Canadian motorsport racing." The first recipient - John F. Bassett - was presented the Award posthumously.
