SURFERS PARADISE, Australia -- As yet another of the wildly successful CART FedEx Championship Series events on the Gold Coast of Australia gets underway this weekend, CART and the organizers of the event in Surfers Paradise announced Friday the signing of a new contract to bring the Champ Cars back to the Australian streets through the year 2008.

This year's Honda Indy 300 marks the 12th season that CART will race in the streets of the Queensland resort town and the event has been breaking attendance records nearly every season of its existence, cementing its status as one of the highest-drawing events on the schedule.

The contract, announced by Peter Beattie, Premier of the State of Queensland, John Cowley, Chairman of Gold Coast Motor Events Company, the organizer of the event and Chris Pook, CART President and CEO, will keep the event in its late October time frame for five more years following the current term which was to expire in 2003.

"The event in Surfers Paradise has long been an example of how a race should be run and we are very pleased to be able to continue our relationship," Pook said. "The event is extremely popular with our drivers, teams, sponsors and most importantly the public.

"The event is a very important part of our ongoing strategy to deliver key markets to our constituents and this agreement reflects the value that our series can deliver into a vital market such as the State of Queensland."

The four-day event is expected to draw over 300,000 fans this year, and saw a crowd of 53,069 come through the gates Thursday -- a number that was an 11 percent increase from last year's opening-day crowd.

"This event injects an estimated $50million into Queensland's economy each year and we're well on target to attract record crowds of more than 300,000 over the four days of racing for the first time -- double the original attendance in 1991," Beattie said. "Breaking the magical 300,000 mark will be a great achievement."