A street race in NASCAR seemed impossible about five years ago since NASCAR kept a pretty consistent schedule from year to year, not changing many track dates. However in recent years since the pandemic, NASCAR has switched up the schedule drastically by experimenting with a Pocono doubleheader, increasing the amount of road courses during the season, covering Bristol in dirt for the spring race, racing inside a stadium, and reviving Nashville Superspeedway and North Wilkesboro. It continued this past year as last year’s schedule release revealed its newest marquee event, a street race in downtown Chicago on 4th of July weekend.

This plan was met with criticism right away as fans were upset that this took away a date from Road America and they were also mad that NASCAR was doing this while nearby Chicagoland Speedway was still left without a date. A street course in Chicago was run on iRacing during the initial lockdown period in 2020 after the pandemic started and drivers were critical of how tight the street course was, leading to few passing opportunities. However despite all these concerns, NASCAR had the track ready to go for both the Xfinity Series and Cup Series last weekend but there was another new problem added to the equation, looming bad weather. 

The rain impacted both races as the Xfinity race started on Saturday before it was stopped just before halfway and the decision was made to finish the race on Sunday morning. However, the weather was still not cooperating on Sunday so NASCAR ended up calling the race altogether and this gave the pole sitter, Cole Custer, his second win of the year after he led every single lap that was completed.

Then later on in the day, the Cup Series race was delayed because of how much it was raining and when the race finally got started, it was too far behind schedule to go the whole distance. Since the sun was setting soon, NASCAR announced mid-race that the distance of the event would be shortened from 100 laps to 75 laps.

Through all the weather-related chaos, the racing put on a show from beginning to end as the drivers had to navigate through the wet track at first and then they had to adjust back to regular tires when the puddles disappeared. There were several times in this race where drivers missed the corners and hit the tire barriers but most were able to continue after the safety crew helped them get out and the big wreck of the day took no cars out of the race as well, it just blocked up the track, causing a caution.

In the end, it was Shane van Gisbergen who captured the victory in overtime in his first career NASCAR start and he was impressive right from the first laps of practice. In the aftermath of the event, this win by van Gisbergen might open the door for other Supercar drivers to attempt a future road course or street course at the Cup Series level and he also expressed interest in running full-time in NASCAR in a couple of years down the road. 

The Chicago Street Race seemed to have gotten mostly positive response from the drivers, media, and fanbase after the exciting weekend and this showed in the TV ratings as this past weekend’s race was the most watched NASCAR race since 2017 excluding the Daytona 500.

NASCAR might be looking to try another street race in Chicago again next year, hopefully without rain or they might go to another part of the country. NASCAR has also recently expressed interest in holding a race internationally too so more drastic and exciting changes to the Cup Series schedule are likely to continue into the next few seasons.