While almost everyone is looking forward to NASCAR racing on Naval Base Coronado in San Diego next year, there are some who do not want NASCAR to return to Chicagoland Speedway.
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After three years of racing on the downtown streets of Chicago, NASCAR pulled out of the Windy City after this year’s race. Officials said they “hoped” to be back at the Chicago Street Race in 2027 or so. There was no official statement that the racing series will return there for sure.
But Chicago is also a key market for NASCAR and there have been strong rumors that the series will return to Chicagoland Speedway (CLS), about 50 miles from downtown Chicago. The last time NASCAR raced at the 1.5-mile oval was in 2019.
While the place would need some updates and upgrades, they’d be minor. But there are folks like NASCAR driver-turned-analyst Kyle Petty who do not want to return to CLS at all.
“Listen, I wish they would go back (to downtown Chicago) because I think it had established itself. You were getting people,” he said during this week’s edition of the Fast Talk podcast on the Performance Racing Network. But then, Petty dropped the truth bomb about Chicagoland Speedway.
“I hope they don’t go to Chicagoland or out there,” he quipped. “And I’m going to say that and let me tell you why. Because I think we took the sport or they took the sport to the streets of Chicago, but I don’t think the streets of Chicago are going to come to Chicagoland.
“And from a fan perspective, the juxtaposition of those two races against each other and the fan base, I think it’s a totally different fan base almost.”
Admittedly, Chicagoland Speedway had significant problems when it hosted NASCAR from 2001 through 2019. The place opened with close to 75,000 seats. But because of dwindling attendance, particularly after 2012, the track continually shrunk its capacity to the point where it is currently estimated to be 47,000.
The question is whether NASCAR will see CLS as a one-and-done situation, provided the Chicago Street Race returns in 2027 or after, or if Chicagoland will indeed draw fans back to the place.
Frankly, it could take NASCAR a few years of racing at Chicagoland to really bring fans back and attract new fans. The Next Generation car is perfect for 1.5-milers and we will likely see close racing at CLS.
“I applaud NASCAR for going to the streets of Chicago,” Petty said. “I would like to see them go somewhere else, whether it’s San Diego (or wherever)… The point is you can take that form of racing (street races) to a lot of places.
“So let’s take it someplace. Let’s make that a traveling date and go to different places and see if we can generate 15,000, 20,000 new fans in that area. Let’s build it a little bit at a time. More like grassroots.”
To be clear, NASCAR didn’t want to leave downtown Chicago or move the street race to another locale. NASCAR wanted to stay in the Windy City, but city officials did not seem willing to let NASCAR continue having a race around the July 4th holiday weekend.
Instead, the city wants the street race to be either in late June or late July, not butting up against the 4th of July weekend when so much is already going on in the city, including holiday fireworks, concerts, and more.
Earlier this month, Sports Business Journal’s Adam Stern wrote: “Over the last year or longer, NASCAR has prepared internally for the possibility of taking its national series back to Chicagoland, with staff visiting the track to survey the scene or model how costly it would be to do any renovations or cleanups, sources said.”
Petty’s hope of NASCAR not returning to Chicagoland didn’t sit well with the likes of Dale Earnhardt Jr., who tweeted, “I’d gamble that it would be one of the most entertaining races of the season.”
And then there was Ryan Blaney, who said, “I wish we go back to Chicagoland. That place is great. It puts on a great race. I don’t know why we stopped going there in the first place. I guess, I do know. They wanted to go to the city of Chicago and not Joliet. I would love to see that track come back personally.”
