“Monumental.”
That was the word of the day Tuesday (July 19) in downtown Chicago.
It was uttered by both Ben Kennedy and Bubba Wallace during the announcement that made the NASCAR Cup Series’ eventual arrival on the streets of America’s third-biggest city official.
Come July 2, 2023, NASCAR’s top series will compete in its first ever street course race.
It’s about damn time.
NASCAR proved it could do this years ago and it didn’t need iRacing to do it.
For those who don’t remember, NASCAR sent the Xfinity Series onto foreign soil for successful street course races in Mexico City (2005-’08) and Montreal (2007-’12).
However, we’re just now getting around to it with the Cup Series.
You can blame it partially on the five-year sanctioning agreement NASCAR had with tracks that locked in race dates. That didn’t end until 2020, around the same time International Speedway Corp. was absorbed by NASCAR and Speedway Motorsports became a private company again.
In the two years since, we’ve gotten Cup races at Circuit of the Americas, Gateway outside St. Louis, Bristol dirt, the Indianapolis road course, Nashville Superspeedway, the Clash at the L.A. Coliseum and Road America, the last of course falling victim to the Chicago race for the time being.
“I’d say of all the changes, this is our boldest change in the schedule,” said Kennedy, NASCAR’s senior vice president of racing development and strategy. “We’ve said … that we want to be bold and innovative and we think about new venues and new concepts that we’re going to. This is No. 1 on the list for us right now, and it’s certainly going to be the most anticipated event of our season and one of the biggest sport events in our country in 2023.”
Kennedy said the genesis of the 2023 race came in late 2019, around the same time NASCAR started the process that led to the Los Angeles race.
That included a visit to Chicago to scout Soldier Field as a potential site for the stadium race.
Now, Soldier Field may be visible through the windshields of Cup cars as they drive toward Turns 3 and 4 on the 12 turn 2.2-mile street course.
Here’s a graphic of the proposed track layout for #NASCAR‘s Chicago street course.
Courtesy of the NASCAR media site. pic.twitter.com/1evE9GwLzF
— Daniel McFadin (@danielmcfadin) July 19, 2022
The idea of NASCAR’s Chicago street course race was planted in our minds 13 months ago with the iRacing event held on a virtual version of the track.
It…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Frontstretch…