COTA happy with first IndyCar crowd

COTA start

COTA boss Bobby Epstein told Autoweek on Sunday night that he was pleased with the crowd for Sunday’s race and said it was at the “upper end of our projections." He had predicted 30,000 on race day.

“The thing about the venue that a lot of people don’t realize is people like to wander," Epstein told Autoweek. “They have some of their favorite hills and want to watch in the turns, so they aren’t really sitting in their grandstand seat. We realized that when we priced the IndyCar ticket. There wasn’t really a difference if you had general admission or had a ticket.

“Most of the people you saw on hillsides had reserved seats somewhere else. But people wander around and meet their friends at a different turn.

“When you spread that crowd out over 3 miles, it gets lost in the actual size of the crowd."