Racing in the Streets of Chicago a Big Success for NASCAR, Despite Rain-Affected Weekend

by Julian Spivey

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NASCAR’s first foray into racing in the streets last weekend in downtown Chicago was a complete success when it comes to the actual NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday, July 2.

The overall weekend, which was billed as something more akin to a festival than a sporting event, was a pretty big failure – though it was all the fault of the weather and nothing to do with NASCAR or the city of Chicago itself.

The sight of NASCAR cars going around the streets of downtown Chicago with the city skyscape in the background, images of traffic on nearing streets and the ‘L’ train going by in the background made for the most unique backdrop in the sport’s history, or at least since the days of driving around on the beaches of Daytona.

It gave hope of the sport, which has seen a drop in the number of fans from its early-to-mid-‘00s heyday, could capture a new audience with the bulk of people attending the Chicago street race saying it was their first time at a NASCAR race. The race was the most-watched one televised on NBC in six years, which includes every championship race of the last six seasons, which was amazing considering the race was delayed by more than an hour due to heavy rain and flooded streets.

The Chicago street race gave me hope that NASCAR could do anything. As a fan of more than two decades, I’d started to wonder if the sport could do anything right, let alone anything it set its sights on.

The race was historical, not simply because it was the first of its kind in the 75-year history of the sport, but also by how it ended. Three-time Australian Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen came over from his homeland of New Zealand to run the race for Trackhouse Racing’s Project 91 team, which is sort of a special team used on a very select basis that brings champions from other types of racing into the sport for one-offs. The car had run last year’s Watkins Glen race and this season’s Circuit of the Americas race in Austin, Texas with former Formula 1 champion Kimi Raikkonen, with a top finish of 29th place. van Gisbergen didn’t just come over to run this race – he came over and won this race. He looked like one of the best on track from the opening minutes of practice, which he led, qualified third and after some pit strategy and the race being shortened by 25 percent (mid-race) due to impending darkness placed him back in the pack he was able to almost cruise from 18th position to the win by the end of lap 75. It was a dominant performance that frankly in the minds of some may have left the regulars of the sport looking a tad embarrassed. van Gisbergen was the first debut winner in a NASCAR Cup Series race since open-wheel star Johnny Rutherford won a qualifying race (which at the time were points-paying races) at Daytona International Speedway in 1963, 60 years ago. He was the first New Zealander to ever win a NASCAR race and just the sixth non-American winner in the series’ 75-year history.

Pretty much everyone within the sport and the majority of the fans – at least those who didn’t already have it out for the sport doing a street race or the event being held in Chicago – deemed it a success, which was something that felt like a miracle given how the rest of the weekend and the day leading up to the race on Sunday early evening went.

Most want to see the sport continue with a street course into the future and the sport is contracted to hold another one next summer in downtown Chicago, but unlike with most tracks, its future isn’t set in stone. The deal for NASCAR to compete in downtown Chicago was agreed to under a previous city administration and the current mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, doesn’t seem to be as gung-ho about the event taking up city streets and affecting local businesses, despite the excitement the event garnered. The city has until 180 days (six months) before the next race to decide whether it wants to bring the NASCAR race back to the city, which means there’s a chance the 2024 race will appear on the NASCAR schedule and still not happen. If the race is canceled for the 2024 season it would make it nearly impossible for NASCAR to run a street race in 2024.

Either way, the sport will likely look into holding street races in other major cities across the country, though it’s doubtful any would be bigger than Chicago, the third largest city in the United States – though don’t think NASCAR wouldn’t try to ask about the two larger ones – New York City and Los Angeles (where the series has held an exhibition race to open the season the last two years in the L.A. Coliseum).

As for the rest of the Chicago weekend, that turned into a disaster, sometimes the weather just wins. That’s likely the biggest issue with the sport running races on city streets, postponements could be tricky or even non-existent based on the length of them.    

The Xfinity Series race, the NASCAR support series that typically runs the day before the Cup Series’ premiere event, was delayed before the halfway point (which typically would make a race official if weather or other issues arose) due to lightning strikes and postponed to the next morning. The next morning came record-setting rain for the time of year for the city of Chicago and NASCAR made the unprecedented decision to call the Xfinity Series race official despite reaching the halfway point, awarding the win to Cole Custer, the leader at the time of the postponement.

The NASCAR weekend, which as previously mentioned was billed more like a festival than a sporting event, was to feature multiple concerts by megastars like The Chainsmokers on Saturday and Miranda Lambert among others on Sunday. Every single concert during the weekend was canceled either due to lightning or torrential rain and flooding.

I can see how those who paid ticket prices, which were among the highest, if not the highest in the sport’s history, would’ve been disappointed to the point of cursing NASCAR for the rest of eternity – and I hope the sport was able to reimburse fans in some way, though with Sunday’s race happening I’m not sure the sport will believe there are grounds to do so. It’s the risk you take when purchasing tickets for a sporting event, even if it was billed more as a festival.

As a sporting event, the NASCAR Chicago race was a major success by all metrics – entertaining race, historic winner, huge TV ratings, beautiful images, etc. It would be a shame if racing in the streets doesn’t continue.