Could the Chicago area host two NASCAR races at some point?
This weekend, NASCAR makes its way back to Chicagoland Speedway for the Eero 400. The Fourth of July Weekend race will mark NASCAR’s return to the facility since the 2019 race there. It’s being billed as an Americana extravaganza, and as one of the Fronstretch representatives covering the race, I’m wondering what the crowd size will be.
If it’s large, it then begs an interesting question, given the fact that NASCAR has been open about its desire for the Chicago street course to make its return to a future schedule: Could Chicago, the third-largest media market in the country, handle two races at separate facilities?
It isn’t outside the realm of possibility. The Midwest is home to a large contingent of NASCAR fans, and while I’m usually one of the more outspoken voices against an area hosting two dates, the products themselves are so different that it makes the proposition all the more intriguing.
On one hand, the oval race caters to the NASCAR faithful. Chicagoland’s old weathered surface is almost certain to rear its head and create a rollercoaster of a race. On the other hand, the street course is one of NASCAR’s most serious attempts to break into new demographics and bring new fans to the sport.
Then there’s the sheer size of the area. NASCAR will visit smaller markets for the second time later this year, for instance. If those areas can sell enough seats to warrant a second date, at the same facilities no less, why couldn’t the Chicago area host two events catering to two completely different sides of the market?
If there were any location that I would be completely fine with NASCAR visiting twice a year, it would be the Chicago area. The market is too big, and there’s too much opportunity on the table to turn down the chance at doing so if it presents itself.
Who is the early favorite for next year’s Ram: Race for the Seat?
Kaulig Racing President Chris Rice confirmed earlier this week that season two of Ram: Race for the Seat is a go for this offseason. In the same breath, that meant Mini Tyrrell‘s deal with the team is just for one year, and he could very well end up back on the show in its next season.
That begs two questions, wrapped into one: what is the point of winning the seat if you’re right back where you started just one year later, and who is the favorite going into this year’s battle for the spot?
If you’re Tyrrell, that seems like one of the most raw deals in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series garage. It takes an incredibly significant amount of time to mesh with a crew, find speed and even simply adjust to the pace and aerodynamics of the Truck Series as it is. Couple that with the fact that Tyrrell is doing all of this with a new manufacturer in Dodge, and you’ve got an interesting cocktail of things to figure out in short order.
Reasons like those are why most full-time drivers don’t sign one-year deals at all. The risk/reward simply doesn’t make sense.
To answer the other question, though, we have to look at what prospects Kaulig has coming up through the ranks of grassroots and ARCA Menards Series racing. Last year, 15 drivers competed for the spot, and it would only make sense for most of them to vie for it again, including Tyrrell.
He’ll be the odds-on favorite, but Landon Huffman and Austin Beers will be hot on his tail. In online discourse, though, some are hoping that international drivers like Canada’s Treyten Lapcevich or NASCAR Mexico’s Alex de Alba.
Have we seen the last points lead swap of the season?
If you had told the greater NASCAR fan base after the first few races of the year that somehow, Tyler Reddick would lose his monumental points lead all together, you would have gotten some crazy looks. Then Denny Hamlin went on a generational mid-season tear, and look where we are now.
And it might even be Hamlin’s regular-season championship to lose at this point, because I don’t see Reddick getting back the momentum he once had until The Chase, nor do I envision a world in which Hamlin miraculously loses all of the speed he’s found in recent weeks.
After back-to-back road courses, Hamlin sits atop the leaderboard following Reddick’s disappointing days. Add to that the fact that the rest of the schedule gets back to NASCAR’s roots and staple tracks, where Hamlin has more experience than nearly the entire rest of the field, and Hamlin’s odds of closing out the regular season on top only skyrocket.
Currently, DraftKings has Hamlin at +175 to win the championship. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which those odds don’t improve, either. Maybe this will finally be the year that Hamlin gets that ever-elusive championship.
Did you know that 30 historic NASCAR stock cars will be at Le Mans this weekend?
While the rest of us watch the races at Chicagoland and celebrate America’s 250th birthday, a host of historic NASCAR stock cars will make their way around Le Mans as part of the first overseas race of the Historic Sportscar Racing in the HSR NASCAR Classic presented by Goodyear.
While most of the questions asked in this column pertain to on-track drama or news within the Cup Series, this venture into the classics section is particularly interesting for a few reasons.
For instance, 2026 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Kurt Busch will pilot his No. 1 Monster Energy Camaro, which he drove during his stint with Chip Ganassi Racing. He has since changed the planned number to No. 8 to honor his late brother, Kyle Busch. The event is meant to commemorate NASCAR’s first trip overseas in 1976 and will feature 30 historic cars dating back to Richard Petty’s 1966 Plymouth Belvedere.
If you’ve ever witnessed an HSR race, don’t go into it thinking that these guys don’t give the cars a good thrashing, either. The drivers may not get fender-to-fender with each other, but they put the old chunks of metal through their fair paces.
Sometimes, it’s still nice to look at how far the sport has come, and this event gives us a chance to do exactly that.
Tanner Marlar is a staff writer for Sports Illustrated’s OnSI Network, a contributor for multiple automotive news outlets, an award-winning sports columnist and talk show host, and a PhD. student at a premier college of media and mass communication. Tanner began working with Frontstretch in 2022, covering the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series.
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