NASCAR is coming to the streets of Chicago, but does Chicago want NASCAR on its streets?
The deal made by Chicago's former mayor to host the race was immediately met with skepticism by other city leaders
Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race in downtown Chicago could be a one-and-done, mainly because some in the city don't want a street race on July 4th weekend.
The race is set to be the first time that NASCAR’s top series has raced on a temporary street course. While series like IndyCar and Formula 1 have regularly raced on downtown streets all across the globe, NASCAR has only ever raced at permanent road courses.
As F1’s popularity has grown over the past five years in the United States and road courses became some of the most entertaining tracks in NASCAR, a street race made logical sense. In addition to three races over two days across various series, the weekend’s event around Chicago’s Grant Park features concerts by The Chainsmokers, Miranda Lambert and others designed to attract attendees who wouldn’t otherwise go to a NASCAR race.
But pushback from local officials, a new mayor and logistical and traffic impacts to Chicago residents could put the race at risk of not completing the three-year contract between the city and sanctioning body.
The race itself is an ambitious play by a sanctioning that’s been making them recently. The preseason Busch Clash has been held on a temporary track inside the Los Angeles Coliseum for the past two years and NASCAR held its annual All-Star Race in May at North Wilkesboro Speedway, a track that had been shuttered for nearly three decades until a recent revitalization project.
The Chicago race has been billed as NASCAR's newest July 4 anchor race with the goal of establishing the race as a signature midsummer event in the middle of a 36-race schedule that spans from February to November.
However, the excitement for the Chicago event isn’t shared by many prominent figures in the city thanks to the way the deal went down. And with former Mayor Lori Lightfoot now out of office, NASCAR could be facing an uphill battle to be back in downtown Chicago in 2024.
Lightfoot’s office announced its deal with NASCAR a year ago. The agreement was unveiled to the public without formal approval from Chicago’s City Council and immediately met with criticism from other politicians in the city.
From the Chicago Sun-Times in December:
Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd), whose ward includes part of the course, was among a few Council members summoned to meet NASCAR officials less than 24 hours before the announcement. The meeting “was a whopping 15 minutes and certainly didn’t go into any detail” about what Lightfoot would soon announce alongside NASCAR CEO Jim France and driver Bubba Wallace.
“There was absolutely no transparency, whatsoever,” Reilly said. The meeting, he said, “was done simply so the mayor could check a box to say, ‘Well, the aldermen were aware.’ ” (In August Lightfoot told reporters “all” Council members “were briefed ahead of time.”)
The three-year deal with the city and NASCAR allows NASCAR to use Grant Park from June 22-July 5 this year at a rate of $500,000 while Chicago receives $2 per ticket sold and a percentage of concession and souvenir sales. The base rental rate is a quarter of what the Lollapalooza music festival pays to rent out Grant Park and was immediately classified by one alderman as “highway robbery.” The cheapest ticket is $269 while reserved seats for the race weekend start at $465.
"This is a half-million dollar deal for 14 days of unfettered use of city property," Illinois Rep. Kam Buckner said last summer. "This is highway robbery.”
Parts of downtown and Grant Park have been closed to the public as NASCAR builds the 2.2-mile track for the weekend. Streets in and around the park have been closed for days. And the race also forced a date change for the iconic “Taste of Chicago.”
The Taste of Chicago food festival has been a summer staple for over 40 years and the event is typically held in Grant Park around the July 4 weekend. But with NASCAR using parts of Grant Park for the race, having the Taste at the same time in the same location was untenable.
At first, the city moved Taste of Chicago to Navy Pier and kept it on the same weekend as the NASCAR event. Once it became clear that plan wasn’t going to work for a variety of reasons, the Taste was moved to September.
The date move for the food festival came two weeks after Lightfoot lost her bid for re-election. Lightfoot placed third in Chicago’s Feb. 28 election and missed the April runoff election by 5%.
Former county commissioner Brandon Johnson won the April runoff to succeed Lightfoot as mayor. He said shortly after his election that the contracts between NASCAR and the city would be reviewed.
The event contract contains a 180-day termination clause that each side can activate. Johnson’s election win came well within that window ahead of the inaugural race weekend. If Chicago moved to cancel the 2023 race after Johnson was in office, the city would have likely triggered a legal battle for breaching the contract.
On the flipside, it also means the city has six months to review the pros and cons of what happens this weekend before deciding if the race should continue in 2024. NASCAR has promised a $100 million economic impact for the city from the event and put longtime executive Julie Giese in charge of the race weekend. She told the Athletic in April that NASCAR was committed to becoming a community partner with Chicago.
“Anytime you bring a new event to a community, it’s change,” she told the Athletic. “We’re making sure that we continue to over communicate and have any and all conversations that we need to have. The message that I’ve shared in every meeting, every conversation that I’ve had is that we are committed to putting on the most spectacular event for the city of Chicago and for our industry. And we are committed to making sure everyone knows what to expect. That’s a big reason why we’ve set up an office here, why we have a full-time staff here in Chicago that is dedicated to this event, that’s out and about talking to the community, being community partners, working on a lot of community giveback initiatives."
That effort from NASCAR underscores how much the weekend needs to be a universal success to win over skeptics in Chicago and secure a sequel in 2024. Any hitch or failure could jeopardize the chances of the race fulfilling that three-year contract and leave NASCAR searching for a fifth location in less than a decade for its July 4 weekend race.
