I wrote several different versions of a column about NASCAR’s first-ever street race in Chicago in my head over the course of the weekend.
There were the ones I came up with on Saturday, when I was walking through the NASCAR Village in Butler Field and the Fan Plaza area around Buckingham Fountain. (The same Buckingham Fountain that Cole Custer wanted to jump into after winning the shortened Xfinity Series race, but was wisely deterred from doing so by the fact that it would be a felony.)
The word around the event was that 80% of the weekend’s ticketholders were first-time NASCAR race attendees, and based on one highly scientific method of gauging such things — which mostly involves looking at what’s on people’s T-shirts — that seemed believable. There were plenty of people wearing driver merch, but perhaps not to the same extent as you see at a “regular” race. For every person I clocked wearing a Kyle Larson shirt, I clocked someone else wearing a souvenir shirt from Taylor Swift’s tour. In fact, most people who appeared to have dressed for the occasion were wearing gear the celebrated the city itself rather than NASCAR or a specific driver.
Crowd reactions were also telling. The commentators made frequent references to the crowds being seven-deep in areas where it was possible to get close to the fence, and I can confirm that they actually were, because I was squeezed in among them between Turns 1 and 2 for the Xfinity practice session. A woman next to me was literally open-mouthed — a perfect O, like in a cartoon — when the cars went by the first couple of times, and she wasn’t alone. A large number of the people crowded around me very much gave the impression that they were watching a race car at speed for the first time. And they were into it.
There were plenty of opportunities for fan engagement too, ranging from different backdrops for selfies — many of which had a queue — to a 20-ish foot four-sided LED screen that alternated between screening social media posts that came from the aforementioned selfies, and sharing general information such as maps and schedules. It was a great feature that could be replicated elsewhere.
Fast-forward to Sunday, and the columns in my head had taken on a different tone as it became increasingly clear that the rain we’d woken up to was more than just a passing shower: more than two inches were dumped onto the area around the track during the day, which is in the window of Chicago’s average rainfall for the entire month of July. The rain itself was not necessarily any heavier than conditions we’ve seen other series race in in the past, but visibility was a legitimate concern, and an even bigger issue was standing water.
NASCAR had the dryers out for hours, but the rain was so relentless that whatever water they were able to clear off was replaced by the time they came around again. And while standing water is a pretty common hazard in the wet, this was something else altogether. People were soaked up to their shins on pitlane. Noah Gragson tweeted a video of one of Legacy Motor Club’s race tires bobbing serenely through the pit box.
Our tires are floating away… pic.twitter.com/bbon6ggY5D
— Noah Gragson (@NoahGragson) July 2, 2023
It doesn’t matter how good your wet tires are – and Goodyear’s really sit in a grey zone between intermediates and true wets – you’re not racing in that. Credit to Kaulig Racing for recognizing a commercial opportunity in the situation, though:
We’re selling bottled inaugural Chicago Street Course pit road pool water!!
Don’t low ball us, we know what we got. 😤 https://t.co/qAoaJmgNZ7 pic.twitter.com/tf0FcO1iIk
— Kaulig Racing (@KauligRacing) July 2, 2023
Some of the workarounds that the series came up with to counter the conditions were surreal but effective. The national anthem was performed from the press room, of all places, well before the actual race start. Same as the command to start engines, delivered by Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields, which meant we had a front row seat to him practicing the phrase ‘drivers, start your engines’ for several minutes before he did it for real. It was a tiny insight into the quest for perfection that sets pro athletes apart from the rest of us, but from a more practical standpoint, it meant NASCAR had all the pre-race formalities already on tap in the event that a window opened up that would allow the Cup cars to race. And when that moment came, the transition from ‘I don’t know if we’re racing today’ to ‘drivers to your cars’ was whiplash-inducingly quick.
I wrote a third column in my head once the race started. I need to come clean here and admit that in the weeks leading up to last weekend, I told a number of people that I was going to Chicago hoping for the best, but wondering if I was going to be witness to a new series record for laps spent under caution. Just like IndyCar’s new downtown Detroit circuit, the Chicago layout looked tight, dinky and designed to be high on incidents and low on passing.
And as with the Detroit track, we were all wrong. The Chicago course was certainly challenging, especially for a field filled overwhelmingly with drivers who are not used to having walls out of both windows. But the racing was absolutely worth the price of admission: cars could easily run two-wide through two or three corners, and the concrete barriers seemed to intimidate the Cup regulars into showing a level of respect to each other that wasn’t always on show at COTA. There was a clear price to pay for getting too clever, and the racing was all better for it. Shane van Gisbergen deservedly owned the spotlight after the race, but the entire field should get credit for the show they put on.
Long-time fans, especially those who watch IndyCar or F1, are so used to seeing events like Long Beach run without a hitch that there’s a risk of taking for granted just how hard it is to pull a street race off. Jim Michaelian’s so good at it that he makes it look easy. It’s exponentially harder when it’s a completely new market, and with a track laid out squarely in the heart of one of America’s biggest and most culturally- and commercially-significant cities, as opposed to a park on the outskirts or a little-used airport. But pretty much every aspect of the event that NASCAR and the race organizers could control was nailed down. I don’t know how much scope there might be to address how those streets drain water off, but for the most part, there were few clues to suggest that this was a first-time event.
Last weekend’s race on the streets of Chicago looked and felt like you’d stepped into something that you’d only expect to see in a video game. But it was real. And it was great.