V8 Supercars executive chairman Tony Cochrane expects next weekend's inaugural Sydney 500 on the streets of Olympic Park to exceed all expectations and turn a profit.
Initial expectations were for a loss of up to $A1 million on the season-ending event but public response has turned that around.
As of last Wednesday the event, which starts next Friday, had sold over 138,000 tickets for the three days with corporate areas completely sold out.
"It's shaping up magnificently," Cochrane told AAP on Sunday.
"If you just isolate one area .... we've sold 25,500 corporates over the three days.
"There wouldn't be a sport in Australia that would tell you that isn't a great result for a weekend event.
"We set ourselves a target in the first year to try to get to 150,000 and, to be perfectly honest, we also said in the first year we'd lose $A1 million, or roughly $AA1 million.
"Right here, right now, we're easily going to get to the 150,000, and we're also going to end up in the black."
Cochrane has long pushed the need for Australia's premier motorsport category to break into the Sydney market.
The series dropped Eastern Creek from the calendar in 2008, with Cochrane having gone on record as describing the western Sydney track a "financial bloodbath".
And with Oran Park's closure to become a housing estate there was a realistic possibility of Sydney not even hosting a V8 event this year.
But Cochrane is confident the Homebush street circuit will amaze fans, teams and drivers alike.
"I personally have fought to get this event up for nearly eight years so I understand the importance of it to our sport," he said.
"It is just a fantastic venue. We've done a real world-class job at developing it into a street circuit and it will come up on TV as exactly that.
"From a racing point of view, Mark Skaife designed the majority of the track and there's no question it's going to throw up some very interesting racing."
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Source: AAP
