Fire on Fridays: Chicagoland Is Back, But For How Long?

After lying dormant for years, Chicagoland Speedway will see NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series cars hit the track for the first time since 2019. But what should be a weekend of celebration, triumph and rebirth is instead overshadowed by a cloud of uncertainty.

In 2023, NASCAR returned to the Chicago area for the first since Chicagoland was removed from the schedule, but in an entirely different capacity via a first-of-its-kind street race through Grant Park in downtown Chicago. Even with the first three race weekends routinely plagued by bad weather, NASCAR’s venture into the city streets was largely a success, as the TV ratings were high and a plethora of first-time fans were in attendance. That’s without mentioning the fact that the series took over the hub of the United States’ third-largest city during one of the biggest holiday weekends of the year for three years straight.

The Chicago Street Race did not return in 2026, so a return to Chicagoland presented NASCAR with the perfect opportunity to maintain a presence in the region, even if said presence was no longer along the lakefront. But the 1.5-mile oval’s future is muddied by NASCAR’s talks with the city of Chicago about bringing the street race back in 2027.

So what’s the problem? There are 36 races on the schedule, plenty of tracks with two annual race weekends and the Chicago metropolitan area is big enough that it could surely support both a trip to the city streets and the oval, right?

Theoretically, yes, but it appears to be a matter of one or the other, and it’s unlikely that both would be on the schedule simultaneously; Dale Earnhardt Jr. said just as much on the June 30 edition of the Dale Jr. Download. So, if the street race returned next year, Chicagoland might be off the schedule before it even got a chance to be back.

That, of course, would be disappointing, especially since millions of dollars were spent to revitalize the track facilities ahead of this race weekend. Furthermore, the Cup Series’ Next Gen car has shone on 1.5-mile intermediate tracks like Kansas Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway, so leaving Chicagoland for a second time might mean passing up what has the potential to be one of the best Cup races of the year from an entertainment standpoint.

Chicagoland’s surface hasn’t been repaved in the 25 years since it first opened in 2001, either, so drivers will be on the edge of control while navigating a hot, slick track and a worn-out surface. In other words, it’ll be must-see TV.

But the hype Chicagoland’s return has received in the NASCAR community also needs to be reflected in attendance numbers. Ticket sales, or lack thereof, have been a hot topic since mid-May, though plenty more have been sold since the large swaths of empty seats were first pointed out.

It doesn’t help that the forecast currently calls for a 50% chance of rain on both Saturday and Sunday, and this isn’t any old Fourth of July weekend; it’s the United States’ semiquincentennial. The celebrations will be big, and spending the weekend along Lake Michigan with family will be an attractive getaway for anyone in the area with the means to travel (Joliet, Ill., the location of Chicagoland, is about an hour’s drive from the lakefront).

But the threat of rain and a holiday weekend, the latter of which usually should usually help attendance, can only provide so much of an excuse. No sellout has been announced for the Cup race at the moment, and with a seating capacity of 47,000, Chicagoland should be one of the easier tracks on the schedule to garner a full crowd, especially for its first race weekend in seven years. The only ovals with less capacity on the points-paying Cup schedule are Homestead-Miami Speedway, Iowa Speedway, Nashville Superspeedway and North Wilkesboro Speedway.

There’s still time to people to buy last-minute tickets, and for the future of Chicagoland, the stands need to be as full as possible to help its cause. Even if the track’s fate on the 2027 schedule largely rides or dies on the return of the street race, a successful Chicagoland weekend will only sweeten the pot for future endeavors.

But while we ponder Chicagoland’s future, let’s also take the time to sit back, celebrate the track’s return and enjoy the show this weekend, which is guaranteed to be a great one if rain doesn’t interfere. Because as we found out in 2019, which ended up being the then-last year for Chicagoland on the schedule after it was removed from the 2020 calendar during schedule changes brought about by COVID-19, you never know when a track will hold its last race.