STAND ON IT! The recession? Long Beach and fans hit the gas.(NEWS)

Byline: PETE LYONS

The Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 19 marked the 35th-annual race through the seaside streets, and that made it special. Name a similar event, other than Formula One's Monaco Grand Prix, that has survived as long.

But the atmosphere and attitude were even more singular. Money is obviously tight right now, so Long Beach Grand Prix CEO Jim Michaelian confronted challenges with an aggressive mind-set.

Michaelian knows all about dilemmas at Long Beach. He was there at the very beginning, when then-boss Chris Pook began to create an American answer to Monte Carlo. He started in September 1975 with Formula 5000 and followed up in March 1976 with the first F1 U.S. Grand Prix-West.

"At the conclusion of those two events, we found ourselves in a significant amount of debt, recalled Michaelian, who was executive vice president at the time. The 1977 GP could well have been the last, had Mario Andretti not saved the day by seizing a last-minute, crowd-pleasing, publicitygenerating win.

But teeming crowds in subsequent years did not yield more than marginal profits, and when F1 czar Bernie Ecclestone kept raising the price he asked of promoters, Long Beach finally opted out. Replacing F1 with CART in 1984 cut attendance but also costs. For the first time, profits permitted investments to grow the event and secure its future.

"Within two years, [attendance] was comparable to where we were in F1. We rode that trend all the way into the 1990s, said Michaelian.