The original course design had called for a loop around the SAP Center, but higher-than-expected costs for street repairs pushed organizers to route the circuit directly through downtown instead. The result was a 1.448-mile course beginning on Almaden Boulevard, where cars ran against the normal traffic direction. Turn one was an abrupt hairpin that sent drivers doubling back along the same boulevard. The course then turned east on Park Avenue, cut through Market Street past Plaza de Cesar Chavez via a shallow chicane, and turned right on Balbach before looping back to Almaden. Two VTA light rail crossings interrupted the asphalt, and the bumps they created were not minor inconveniences -- they were mechanical hazards that broke suspensions and launched chassis into the air.

The first San Jose Grand Prix, the Taylor Woodrow Grand Prix of San Jose, ran July 29 through 31, 2005. Organizers promised it would ignite interest in racing across Northern California, and they packed the weekend with supporting series: Trans-Am, Toyota Atlantic Championship, United States Touring Car Championship, Historic Stock Cars, and Formula D drift competition. But the main event was a survival exercise. After practice revealed the track's brutality, officials scrambled to add a chicane to the front stretch and relocate a grandstand for more runoff space. It was not enough. On race day, car after car dropped out -- crashes on the narrow sections, mechanical failures from the rail crossings. Passing was nearly impossible. Yet 60,000 fans showed up on Sunday alone, and three-day attendance exceeded 150,000. Somehow, the chaos was the show.

For 2006, organizers overhauled the circuit. They swapped the pit road and frontstretch, moving the start-finish line closer to the premium seating that palm trees had blocked the previous year. The chicane before the rail crossing was removed, creating a longer straight. Turn two onto Park Avenue was widened for passing opportunities, and the Market Street rail crossing was leveled to keep cars on the ground. The event was renamed the Canary Foundation Grand Prix, and Formula BMW USA replaced some of the departed support series. Sebastien Bourdais set the all-time modified layout record at 48.678 seconds during qualifying. But the fixes could not reverse declining interest: paid attendance dropped to 83,248, a substantial decrease. In 2007, Redback Networks lent its name to the circuit, rookie Robert Doornbos from the Netherlands won the Champ Car race, and overall attendance held at about 120,000 -- but paid numbers slipped again.

Championship car racing in the San Jose area actually predated the Grand Prix by more than half a century. The San Jose 100 ran at the mile-long Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in 1951 and 1952. During the 1952 race, driver Joe James was killed after his car flipped end over end, a reminder of the sport's lethal stakes in an era before modern safety equipment. The 2005 Grand Prix revived that legacy, but its grip on downtown was always tenuous. On September 11, 2007, organizers announced the race would not return. Plans to move to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca fell through when Champ Car itself ceased operations in February 2008, merging into the Indy Racing League. The streets of downtown San Jose returned to their intended purpose, the rail crossings once again the concern of commuters rather than racing engineers.