CHICAGO — A smiling Jordan Anderon stood behind his collection of NASCAR haulers, extending handshakes and pats on the back on Saturday (July 5) afternoon.
Among them was Austin Green, his race team’s part-time driver and road course extraordinaire. They all stood on Lakeshore Drive, adjacent to Chicago’s famous Grant Park, after the NASCAR Xfinity Series’ annual street race.
Green, for the second consecutive start in 2025, had earned a top-10 finish — his fifth career overall.
“Another top 10 obviously is really solid,” Green told Frontstretch. “This place is for, at least my calendar, I think the toughest, both physically, mentally, mechanically, everything, so I just can’t thank Doug Peterson enough and Jordan Anderson Racing enough.”
It hadn’t started optimistically for the Jordan Anderson Racing team early in the day. With the pressure of knowing he had to qualify into the race first or go home, Green’s No. 32 had qualified 17th. At a track where passing lanes are difficult to come by, he knew it wasn’t ideal.
“Yeah, practice this morning, [I was] Kind of taking it easy a little bit,” Green said. “You don’t want to go out and fence it or wreck it like some of the guys did and have to start somewhere in the rear. But we don’t have points, so if I did that we probably would have went home.
“Then qualifying, you kind of flip that switch and qualified 17th, so not terrible, but still need to work on that.”
At first, it wasn’t spectacular either. The JAR Volpi Chevrolet hadn’t earned any stage points throughout the first 30 of the scheduled 50 laps.
Yet among a day that saw plenty of pit strategies and untimely cautions, Green had pitted and saved fuel just right to find himself inside the top 10 with less than 10 laps to go.
However, with one last restart occurring at the end, Green had to survive the assured late-race drama that was about to unfold on a restart with two laps to go.
Anderson, on top of Green’s pit box, held on tight.
“Man, you know, it tears at your heart,” Anderson told Frontstretch. “So this stuff here, I got gray hair popping out everywhere. I’m just kind of learning how to do a better job of managing all the emotions and all the stress. If you can get out of here with all three cars that fairly, pretty much roll straight in the trailer, it’s still a good day.”
The 24-year-old Green restarted wonderfully, however, and held his position to earn his second consecutive top-10 finish by placing ninth. In both his starts on the streets of Chicago, Green has earned a top-10 finish.
Not bad for a part-time driver.
“In the beginning, if it’s a couple of weeks off, it’s still kind of have to knock the rust off a little bit,” Green said. “But … it’s a good feeling to always run good.”
Leading up to NASCAR’s visit to Autodromo Rodriguez Hermanos in early June, it had been a rough year for the second-generation driver Green. Through five attempts, Green had failed to qualify for two races and had a high finish of only 26th in Circuit of the Americas.
However, he rallied at Mexico City to finish seventh, and now with his ninth-place result, it’s Jordan Anderson Racing’s 10th top 10 of the year.
Anderson sees the talent, too, and with his cherished road course ringer, he hopes to put him in a full-time car one day, and one day soon.
“We’ve kind of kicked around the idea of what next year looks like,” Anderson said. “I know that a lot of the partners want to look into him more, so I think he’s definitely, if you could go up and down the grid of who’s deserving of a full-time opportunity doesn’t have one right now, I think he’s probably the top of that list. He definitely takes care of equipment. He’s learned a lot.”
Hopefully, more results like this will warrant such a ride sooner than later.
“A full-time ride at some point, hopefully, if we just keep doing what we’re doing and what I’m doing collectively as a team and when we’re up there fighting with JR [Motorsports] and [Joe Gibbs Racing] and [Haas Factory Team] and all those guys, it is kind of special for us,” Green said. “We’re a small team, so I don’t know.
“Hopefully, I just keep doing what I’m doing and just keep showing people.”
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loud column, co-host of the Frontstretch Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT