Early years The event arrived in Australia on the back of lobbying from a consortium of businessmen from the state of
Queensland. The event's early years were dogged by controversy as Australia's motor sport governing body, the
Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS), initially refused to sanction the event due to threats from the FIA to pull the Australian Formula One Grand Prix from championship status, as they believed that the Australian Indy Car Grand Prix on the Gold Coast went against their copyrights / trademarks. The
Queensland State Government had been largely supportive of the event, whereas support at local level from the
Gold Coast City Council varied, and was occasionally openly hostile to the event. From 1991 to 1997, the Gold Coast Grand Prix was typically held in March, and several times served as the CART season opener. In 1996, the
Australian Grand Prix (
Melbourne) moved from the fall to the spring. It created an undesirable scheduling conflict which eventually saw the Gold Coast Indy move permanently to October, starting in 1998. By the late 1990s, as political tensions subsided, the race become a well-attended and popular event on the Gold Coast calendar with tens of thousands of spectators attending each of the four days of the event. The
1993 race was particularly notable as
1992 Formula One champion
Nigel Mansell's first race in American championship car racing, which he won in front of a large number of travelling British fans and media. It was also the first of a record seven race wins at the event for
Newman/Haas Racing. In the
2002 event there was a frightening incident when a nine-car pile-up occurred at the start in very wet conditions, however no significant injuries were sustained. In
2003 a massive thunderstorm struck the area during the race, leading to a
red flag and shortened race distance. Due to the main event having two years of bad weather, organisers changed the starting time to avoid the typical Queensland summer storms. This change was seen by some as not needed as the next 3 events were run in bright sunshine. From 2005, the final event of the weekend would be the V8 Supercars final race.
Decline The event lost some of its lustre from
2004, as the split between American open wheel racing series started to draw teams from the Champ Car World Series across to the IRL IndyCar Series, whose calendar was considerably more domestic than the well-travelled Champ Car World Series. The falling popularity of open wheel racing in America further devalued the event, with
NASCAR dominating the U.S. racing scene. The waning interest led to the
V8 Supercars (the leading
touring cars category in Australia and a support category since 1994) move from a non-championship to
championship event in 2002 and take equal top billing with Champ Car, an unprecedented move across the Champ Car calendar. In the first sixteen years of the event, there were sixteen different winners. In
2007 Sébastien Bourdais became the first driver to win the race twice, adding to his
2005 victory.
Merger On 5 March 2008, it was announced that the IndyCar Series would travel to Australia for the first time, but due to contractual issues the race would not count towards the
2008 championship and would be a stand-alone demonstration event, in light of the recent merger between Champ Car and the IRL.{{cite news ==Demise and A1GP==