Townsville 400 hailed a 'massive success'

The praise of the inaugural Dunlop Townsville 400 came thick and fast all week and it was no different at the end of the final day on Sunday.

V8 Supercars Australia executive chairman Tony Cochrane, said he was just 'blown away' with the success of Townsville's first event, which attracted 59,984 fans today, giving the inaugural event a three-day total of 168,057.

In comparison, the now highly-successful Clipsal 500 had a first year total crowd of 162,000 in 1999 - this year, that event's crowd was 272,800.

"This has been a massive success," said Cochrane. "It really leaves us wondering how much bigger this sport can become.

"To think this replaced an event at Eastern Creek in Sydney which last year had a three-day crowd of around 29,000. The numbers in our heads were nothing like this. It is a tremendous result and something that everyone involved should take tremendous pride in.

"We had a couple of small teething problems and if it was not for those, which we are already addressing for next year, this would have been a triple-A rate event."

Meanwhile V8 Supercar Events boss Shane Howard said there was a real feeling of accomplishment in being involved in such a successful first-up event.

"Like Tony, I am simply blown away," said Howard. "When you think about those very early preliminary discussions about this event 10 years ago to what we produced over the last three days - you have to wonder where the years actually went.

"We simply surrounded ourselves with good people who got the job done. We have already started debriefs to fix some of our issues for next year for an event I am sure is going to be even bigger and better."