Top Ten Canadian road racing courses

The first road race in Canada (not oval track race, road race) was held in Winnipeg in 1904. It was held on Labour Day Monday, Sept. 5, and went from the Clarendon Hotel north to Stonewall and back, a distance of 48 miles then or 78 kilometres now.

The winner was Jack McCulloch, who drove a Ford. He was accompanied by J. Boswell, according to the Winnipeg Free Press. He made the trip in one hour and 40 minutes. He would have been faster but he ran out of gasoline and had to "stop and get some from a house on the way."

The most recent road race in Canada was held on the runways of the City Centre Airport in Edmonton last Sunday. The winner was Scott Dixon and he was by himself. It took him one hour and 50 minutes to go a little over 187 miles (301.647 kms)

In between, there have been many races held on many different racing circuits. Here are the Top Ten Canadian road-racing courses:

1. Mosport International Raceway is the oldest, continuously operating, road-racing facility in the country. Opened in 1961, it has featured world championship sports car, Formula One and Indy car racing as well as some of the top stock car series. It will officially celebrate its 50th anniversary in late August when the headline event will be the annual American Le Mans Series race. Lots of good stuff is planned and organizers hope that many of the people who raced there over the years will return for a reunion.

2. Le Circuit-Mont Tremblant was opened in 1964 and, like Mosport, was home to Can-Am, Trans-Am, F1 and Indy car races. Located in the Laurentian Mountains near St. Jovitte, it is the most beautiful place in the country to hold a motor race. Unfortunately, it ran into financial difficulty several times over the years and, although it still operates, does not feature headline events any longer.

3. Atlantic Motorsport Park can be found near Shubenacadie in Nova Scotia (people love to say they’re going racing there so they can say the name Shubenacadie) and has been in operation since 1974. Once the site of races in the Canadian Driving Championship (Formula Atlantic in the 1970s), the major events today are mostly of the two-wheel variety. The final round in this year’s Parts Canada Superbike Championship, for example, will be held there in early August.

4. Circuit Trois-Rivieres is the home of the annual Trois-Rivieres Grand Prix, which was started in 1967. A street circuit, it is where Gilles Villeneuve was "discovered" in 1976 by James Hunt, the soon-to-be F1 world champion, who was defeated by the little Canadian dynamo in a special Formula Atlantic race. Although the Grand Prix has featured the American Le Mans Series as well as Trans-Am, Can-Am, Indy Lights and the Grand Am Rolex Series, the headline event these days is a round of the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series.

5. Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve was founded by Roger Peart, president of ASN FIA Canada, in late 1977. Originally Circuit de Ile Notre Dame, it was renamed after Villeneuve’s death and is the permanent home of the Grand Prix of Canada. When Labatt sought to move the GP to Toronto’s CNE grounds from Mosport, Toronto city council procrastinated. A phone call to Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau resulted in an instant decision and Peart was instructed to find a site. He did, on the vacant island home of Expo 67. Villeneuve won the first race in 1978; Lewis Hamilton the most recent.

6. The Canadian National Exhibition presented auto racing going back as far as 1900. American speed demon Barney Oldfield set a "world’s record" there in 1904. Gaston Chevrolet beat an airplane in a match race in 1917. Thrill shows were a mainstay in the Thirties and Forties and stock car racing flourished in the 1950s. In the 1960s, an effort to move the F1 and Indy car races from Mosport to the CNE fizzled and it wasn’t until the first Molson Indy in 1986 that big-league car racing became an annual event at the Ex. Sponsored now by Honda, the race wasn’t held in 2007 but there are indications that it’s back to stay.

7. Shannonville Motorsport Park was built by the late John Nelson in 1977 and originally called Nelson Raceway. When Nelson sold it, the new owners named it after the nearby village, which is located on Highway 2 in Ontario between Belleville and Napanee. Regional races, club races and professional motorcycle races have been its mainstay, along with driver schools and lapping days. Calabogie Motorsport Park north of Ottawa and Circuit ICAR (the International Centre of Racing circuit located at Mirabelle Airport in Quebec) are similar facilities that, along with Shannonville, have also hosted rounds of the Castrol Canadian Touring Car Series.

8. Edmonton’s City Centre Airport originally held car racing back in the 1990s when the CASCAR Super Series was the headline event. After that, it continued to function primarily as a regional airport until 2005 when the first Champ Car Grand Prix was held, sponsored by the West Edmonton Mall. Champ Car was the sanctioning body until the Indy Racing League took over and the recent Honda Indy Edmonton was an IRL/IndyCar event. Despite a decision by city council to close the airport, it won’t happen any time soon. The city recently came to an agreement with Canadian Grand Prix promoters Octane Group to run the race for the next three years

9. Pacific Place in Vancouver held the first western Molson Indy in 1990 and it was a wonderful stop on the CART/Champ Car calendar until 2004. Several things happened that year to chase the race away from the Lower Mainland: a) the Concorde Pacific development company had built so many condominiums on the site of Expo 86 that promoting a car race became problematic (although, as some maintain, not impossible). B) and more important, the commercial community told race organizers that as of the end of fiscal ‘04, they would be committing their sponsorship dollars to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Hence, the race went away to Edmonton. But the Olympics are over and the IndyCar people are looking to add a third Canadian race. Don’t bet against Vancouver making a comeback.

10. Sanair/Quebec City/Race City Motorsport Park are located in different parts of the country but Sanair and Race City are active in hosting club racing and local stock car racing events. All are prepared – but particularly Quebec City and Calgary – to promote a big-league event like a third Indy car race, if necessary. Sanair was the site of several CART oval track races in the 1980s (it was where Rick Mears suffered severe foot and ankle injuries) but is now the home of drag racing in Quebec. Quebec City (Tagliani race team owner Andre Azzi would like to run a street race near the St. Lawrence River) and Calgary (Race City has an oval, a drag strip and a road course) are both preening themselves in case the IRL comes calling.

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