Montreal in NASCAR drivers seat for 2007?

Montreal in NASCAR drivers seat for 2007?


TSN.ca Staff
7/19/2005 10:15:19 AM
The window for staging Canada's first ever NASCAR race is quickly closing, according to series officials. It's now looking more and more like the premier stock car series will make its way north of the border in 2007.
"We're open-minded; we've been approached by a number of groups (in Canada). But certainly Montreal has a lot to offer," NASCAR CEO George Pyne tells the Winston Salem Journal.
"Normand Legault (Chairman and CEO of Grand Prix F1 of Canada) has expressed a real interest in a race in Montreal. That's a great facility. That's something we'll take a good hard look at, but I think that's more of an '07 option than '06."
"We're pretty far along with the schedules for 2006. And we'd have to move some things around on the schedule for '06 (to fit in a Montreal race)."
However, fans expecting a Nextel Cup race to debut in Canada will be disappointed.


"It wouldn't be for the Nextel Cup series," says Pyne, indicating that a Busch Grand National event was a more likely scenario. However, every effort would be made to schedule a race on an open Cup weekend so that many of the Nextel drivers would be able to attend.
NASCAR recently staged its first ever Busch Series race in Mexico City and Pyne believes they can replicate that success in Canada.
"Canada is a great market, and we've got a strategic alliance with CASCAR (Canadian Association for Stock Car Racing) and a partnership with TSN (Canada's leading sports television network), and we need to have an event up there if that's a market we want to grow in," he tells the newspaper.
"I think we're making a lot of progress. There is a lot of interest among some of the major Canadian corporations to support a NASCAR endeavor. It will take a lot of corporate support for CASCAR, TSN and the race itself. And we're working on that and cautiously confident good things will happen."
Pyne says weather will play a crucial factor in when NASCAR schedules a race in Canada with June, July and August the most likely dates for a race.
Formula One currently stages a race in Montreal in June while the Champ Car series races on the Gilles Villeneuve Cir