NASCAR officials have denied any involvement in all this, but Sperber has been a very vocal opponent of the idea of the street race, calling it a "stupid, mickey-mouse, dinky-toy race'. Champ Car's general counsel Matt Breeden has sent a letter to Brian France and Jimmy France asking NASCAR and ISC to desist and both Kalkhoven and Jerry Forsythe say they will go to court to fight any move to ban street racing in Arizona, or anywhere else in the United States.
"Two prominent Arizona citizens, well-connected because of the Diamondbacks and the Suns, want to do a major redevelopment of an area of downtown Phoenix," Kalkhoven said, "They want to turn it into a sports and entertainment area and, as part of that, they want to brand it. They decided the best way to brand it was to use the Long Beach example of a festival which would get it national and international exposure on television and would be a very fast way of getting a name out rather than just letting it slowly develop of its own accord.
"So what started out as something that would have zero taxpayer involvement and be a net contributor to the revenue base of Phoenix and would develop this area of Phoenix, eventually morphed into something that would ban motorsports in Arizona unless it was held at a NASCAR property. Now how on earth does that happen?
"They took something that was essentially good for the people, and the revenue base, of Phoenix and converted it into something that would have banned all forms of motorsport that were not under their control, whether it was go-karting or tractor pulling. How do you do that? How does anyone have the arrogance to move from something that is positive for a community and turn it into something that is fundamentally extremely negative for an entire state?
