In Chase Elliott’s opinion, Music City is a better place to have a NASCAR race than the Windy City. During his media availability on Saturday, Elliott said that if NASCAR must make some significant decisions on what markets to keep racing in and others that perhaps need a hiatus, he would choose Nashville Superspeedway over the Chicago Street Race.
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The third edition of the street race takes place on Sunday in downtown Chicago while Nashville has held a Cup race on its 1.33-mile track for the last five years, including last month.
Whether there will be a fourth straight year in Chicago or the street race concept potentially moves to another location — San Diego, Philadelphia, Vancouver and Toronto are among markets that have been most frequently mentioned — is the biggest question.
“I think it’s a great idea, for sure, and I’m all for that,” Elliott said of racing on city streets. “The biggest reason I’m such a big advocate of Nashville is because, to me, oval track racing is kind of our bread and butter, right? So we have that there. This is a great second choice to get to a city, but there’s nothing that’s going to top giving people a true short track.”
Technically, it may be splitting hairs, but Nashville Superspeedway is not a true short track. It’s more of a shorter intermediate track. Places like Bristol, Martinsville, Richmond and even the one-mile tracks at Phoenix and New Hampshire are true short tracks in NASCAR parlance.
Nashville vs. Chicago? Elliott picks which one he prefers
The former Cup champ believes Nashville has an edge over Chicago, calling it a short Uber ride for fans from downtown to the track roughly 25 miles away. Plus, it’s a standalone facility, whereas setting up and tearing down the Chicago street race causes significant disruption.
“If I lived here (in Chicago) and I wasn’t a NASCAR fan, I could totally see the frustration of roads being blocked and traffic and all that sort of thing,” Elliott said.
Elliott then seemed to double down on his Nashville vs. Chicago argument by hinting he believes Sunday’s race could potentially be strike three for its future — and that there will not be a fourth race in Chicago.
NASCAR and city officials originally signed an agreement to hold the street race for 10 years, but the contract only guarantees the first three races. All other races are optional for NASCAR to conduct or cancel.
“It’s been fun for us,” Elliott said, sounding as if Chicago will indeed be in NASCAR’s rearview mirror after Sunday, although rumors have already started sprouting up that NASCAR could return next year to Chicagoland Speedway (CLS), located about 50 miles from downtown Chicago, and which hosted NASCAR from 2001-2019. It also helps that NASCAR still owns CLS.
“I hope there’s been more positive than there has been negative for the people of Chicago,” Elliott said. “Whether this is the last year or not, I appreciate them having us, even the ones that didn’t want us.
“I look forward to wherever it goes next. I hope that somewhere down the line, we can take it to a different city, just to switch it up, just like the championship race rotating.”
Elliott added, “I think a city street course moving around would be really healthy and good. If this is the last year, I don’t think there’s any bridges burned. I just think maybe we move it around and, who knows, maybe come back (to Chicago) another time.”
Even if the street race model transfers to another city, Elliott believes Chicago has established a great concept that will make it a challenge for other cities to match or even improve upon.
“From a driver’s side, it is nice to not have massive changes on the road from year to year because it can be tough to adapt to that stuff,” Elliott said.
“Obviously the marketing side is a whole other answer,” Elliott said. “But yeah, it’s been fun from a competition perspective and I think they’ve done a good job with it.”
However, if Chicago does not sell out Sunday’s race — or even come close to it — and if weather once again is an impediment, that likely could signal the death knell to the race’s future. The first two years of the street race have been impacted by rain, and even worse, there’s an 80 percent chance per the forecast.
