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Road America staying on IndyCar calendar in 2017

Road America's return to the IndyCar calendar will continue into 2017 after a huge crowd attended the track's first top-level American single-seater race in nine years last weekend

The famous Elkhart Lake track, an icon of the CART schedule, had fallen off the schedule when Champ Car and the IndyCar Series merged in 2008.

Its return this year was sufficiently successful for a 2017 deal to be announced as the race finished, with the event again taking place on the last weekend of June.

Road America president and general manager George Bruggenthies would not give a crowd estimate but had privately told IndyCar CEO Mark Miles and team owner Bobby Rahal it was the biggest crowd in track history with 100,000 tickets sold for the three-day weekend.

"I know they probably exaggerated numbers in the early days, but I talked to a couple of my board of directors, and this is likely the largest event ever hosted by Road America, so that's really something," said Bruggenthies.

Race winner Will Power was one of four drivers in the field who had also competed in Champ Car's final race at the track, and had been one of the main supporters of a Road America return.

"It's just a cool, old-school track," Power said.

"There's not many of them around that we go to anymore, and any of the ones that we do go to [are successful] - you go to Mid-Ohio there's a big crowd.

"It was amazing just walking around here on Thursday, there were so many people.

"But even Friday night I went for a walk through the camping grounds and it was just awesome to see so many people having fun. On the parade lap, it was just such a big crowd, it was crazy.

"It's great for IndyCar.

"We should have been back here a long time ago."

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