The 2008 Nikon Indy 300 was the 19th and final race of the 2008 IndyCar Series. It was held on 26 October 2008 on the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit in Queensland, Australia.

It was the first time the race was held for the Indy Racing League after 17 years as a Champ Car race. The race did not count towards the 2008 Indycar season points as the race date was held after Chicagoland Speedway, which was preset as the season finale prior to the merger of Champ Car and IRL.

The race was won by an Australian driver for the first time in the 18 year history of the event with Ryan Briscoe winning for Team Penske after leading much of the race, while pushed hard by the near-local, New Zealander Scott Dixon. Ryan Hunter-Reay emerged from an entertaining dice to complete the podium in third position.

With the championship decided, some teams are using the race as a prelude to 2009 campaigns, with Dario Franchitti making his return to IndyCar after a failed attempt at breaking into NASCAR. Franchitti takes Dan Wheldon's seat at Chip Ganassi Racing, while Wheldon also moves on to his 2009 team, Panther Racing where he replaces Vitor Meira. Meira will drive for his new team, A. J. Foyt Enterprises.

The Nikon Indy 300 was an open-wheel motor race event that took place at the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit in south east Queensland, Australia. Known generically as the Gold Coast Indy 300, Japanese camera giant Nikon was announced as new naming rights sponsor in early August 2008. The challenging 4.47 kilometre track has several fast sections and four chicanes.

The race had been an annual event since 1991 originally as part of the CART IndyCar World Series. Then, following the split between CART and the newly formed Indy Racing League (IRL) in 1996 and the subsequent dissolution of CART in 2003, as part of the Champ Car World Series.

Following the merger of the Indy Racing League and Champ Car World Series in February 2008 the future of race had been secured until 2013 as an IRL IndyCar Series event, however the race was omitted from the 2009 IndyCar Series season calendar, and subsequently dropped by the IRL completely.

In the first sixteen years of the event, there were sixteen different winners. In 2007 Sébastien Bourdais became the first driver to win the race twice, adding to his 2005 victory.

Ryan Briscoe (born 24 September 1981 in Sydney) is an Australian auto racing driver who has raced open wheel and sports cars in Europe and America.

In addition to his native English, Briscoe speaks Italian and French. He attended Trinity Grammar School in Summer Hill, Sydney, Australia.

He is married to ESPN motorsport reporter, Nicole Briscoe (née Manske) whom he wedded in 2009.

Like many auto racing drivers, he started his career in karting, first racing in 1993. After winning Australian, North American and Italian championships, he moved to Formula Renault in 2000. He won the Italian Championship in 2001 (winning 5 races) and finished 4th running a limited schedule in the Eurocup (with 2 wins in 6 races). In 2002, he became test driver for the Toyota Formula One constructor. He started that year racing in the Formula 3000 series, but struggled and left his ride after 7 races. He finished the year in the German Formula 3 series, taking 3 podiums in the last 6 rounds. He won the Formula Three Euroseries in 2003 (winning 8 races in the process). He became the Toyota F1 team's 'third' driver (i.e., drove the team's test car on Fridays at Grands Prix) for the last third of the 2004 season, after previous third driver Ricardo Zonta was called up to replace Cristiano da Matta.

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