What’s next for NASCAR after Chicago Street Race Weekend?
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As NASCAR returns portions of Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue back to the city and people of Chicago, both city officials and the sanctioning body’s brass will assess its first street race weekend.
NASCAR’s hype machine has been turned up to 11 since the announcement a year ago that it would race on streets surrounding Chicago’s front yard, also known as Grant Park.
There were haters. There were skeptics.
But in the end, even Mother Nature couldn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the fans who did brave the heavy rains and flooded roadways to check out NASCAR’s first street race in its 75-year history.
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Shortened because of impending darkness, the Grant Park 220 was won by New Zealand’s Shane van Gisbergen, a three-time Australia Supercars champion, driving Trackhouse Racing’s PROJECT91 car, a part-time entry for international drivers to sample NASCAR racing.
It marked the first time a NASCAR newcomer had won in his first career Cup Series start since Johnny Rutherford won a qualifying race at Daytona in 1963.
Senior vice president of racing development and racing strategy, Ben Kennedy, says NASCAR has plenty of takeaways from its first foray into street racing.
“Certainly this is brand new to us. This is the first time we’ve done something like this. Naturally we’ll have a lot of learnings out of this as we think about the future.
“Obviously we’re going to have a very deep dive postmortem after this event,” Kennedy continued. “A lot of surveys will go out collecting a lot of feedback. Of course there were a lot of things that went according to plan; there were some things that didn’t go according to plan obviously with the weather.”
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Despite the disruption caused by the weather, Kennedy was pleased with how the weekend played out.
“Yeah, I think it played out really well if you look at today. Obviously I think if you run the clock back to yesterday morning all the way up until we had the (lightning) hold, I think obviously a lot of energy, a lot of fans, a lot of people that have followed our sport for a long time, but a lot of new fans, as well.
“And then naturally I think as we progressed through today, as soon as we got the cars started, a lot of people started to file in.
“As we said going through the scheduling process, this is a journey. We announced a lot of things in our 2021 schedule, we went to new markets. Next evolution of that for us, naturally the (Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial) Coliseum. This is kind of the next iteration of that.
“And as we go through it, we’re by no means saying that everything is going to be perfect from day one. But you don’t know unless you try, and we gave it a really good effort today, and certainly proud of all the work that everyone has done.
“I think the city showed so well, certainly on broadcast today, and then the energy around the field and around the park today was palpable.”
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Contributing to the success of the weekend was NASCAR’s Next Gen car. The more nimble car proved it could put on a race on the tight quarter-mile track at the Coliseum. Now it proved it could race on a city street course. That opens up endless possibilities for NASCAR to take its product to new markets, both domestically and internationally.
NASCAR’s chief operating officer, Steve O’Donnell.
“What’s great about this is NASCAR has huge interest globally right now,” said O’Donnell. “We saw it in Garage 56 (at the 24 Hours of Le Mans). Ben and I had a number of meetings with a number of different countries and a number of different continents wanting races.
“Good problem to have for us, but we want to do what’s right for our fans, take the product to where we think it’s going to resonate. To us, this was perfect. Applaud Ben for having the vision on this.
“We’re more of Chicago Bears type fan base, and I think we delivered that today, and the fans that showed up hopefully felt that with us, as well. So we’ve got to balance that as to where we go next.”
And just how soon could NASCAR extend its reach internationally? O’Donnell wouldn’t say.
“I think we’re all confident at NASCAR that we could take the Cup Series anywhere we want”
“I’m not going to put a timetable on it, but I think we’re all confident at NASCAR that we could take the Cup Series anywhere we want, and we do that with the industry, and I think — I don’t think, I know the race we put on today would sell and would be embraced globally for sure.”
Emboldened by the success of the Coliseum and Chicago events, it’ll be interesting to see where NASCAR goes next.