How NASCAR’s Chicago street course came to be and how the circuit lays out

CHICAGO — Under the cover of darkness in the middle of the night on Nov. 16, 2020, a small team consisting of one iRacing scan operator and a half dozen police officers and city officials assembled in downtown Chicago on an assignment that, if they were successful, had the potential to revolutionize NASCAR.

What they were doing was laser scanning the streets as part of a project in which iRacing would build a digital racetrack through downtown Chicago for its elaborate virtual racing platform. The twist that made this venture different from other times iRacing had conducted scans was that instead of scanning an existing real-world track, this was something more complex.

NASCAR was asking iRacing to go into downtown Chicago with its scanning equipment with the intent of not just building a realistic virtual racetrack, but also one that could then be replicated in real life should the need arise. At the time, NASCAR’s powers that be had identified downtown Chicago as a site for a purpose-built street course to stage Cup Series races.

With the hope of this idea one day becoming reality, NASCAR worked with the city and the Chicago Sports Commission to identify an area where a track could be constructed. Once this was done, iRacing then rolled into town tasked with its mission. They quickly realized this was an ideal location to host a NASCAR street course race.

“We noticed this kind of cool, curved road (along South Michigan Ave.) that’s on the city side, the back side of the track, and we saw right away that’s a cool road we have to incorporate somehow,” said Steve Myers, iRacing’s executive vice president. “And so that helped us start to reverse engineer a path that gets us there.”

The project was successful. Within a few months, iRacing had built a realistic track through the streets of Chicago, one that this weekend will come to life when it hosts the first NASCAR Cup Series race on a street course in history.

The layout that will be used this weekend is largely the same as the one iRacing designed. What came from that initial recon mission was a 12-turn, 2.2-mile circuit that winds through Grant Park that among its sightlines includes iconic downtown city landmarks like Buckingham Fountain, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Art Institute of Chicago and Lake Michigan. The cost to stage a race in the heart of the country’s third-largest media market and to build the circuit: $50 million.

“You’re not going to find a more iconic setting and everyone’s going to see that,” track president Julie Giese said. “It is magnificent. To me, if we’re going to do a street race, then let’s do it in a very iconic location. And there’s no more iconic location in downtown Chicago than where we’re at. It’s just very authentic Chicago.”

Get ready for this weekend's #NASCARChicago action with this turn-by-turn fly-through. pic.twitter.com/vXA6lUYHaw

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) June 29, 2023

Immovable impediments such as the buildings that line Chicago’s downtown skyline, the museums, Grant Park and Lake Michigan mean designers were limited on what they could do when laying out how the actual course would look. Seven to eight different variations were considered. The most noticeable configuration that was considered was reversing the direction of the track, but that was ultimately dismissed for concerns on how drivers would safely enter and exit pit road.

“We looked at it many ways before settling on this particular iteration with this configuration,” said Jeremy Casperson, director of civil engineering at NASCAR. “There are buildings to the west and Lake Michigan to the east, the good thing is that in Chicago the parks are all built towards the lake.

“(The footprint) is very tight, but it’s probably one of the only places in the city where we could do this.”

Although street courses are commonplace in Formula One, IndyCar and in sports car racing — and NASCAR has competed on them in its lower-level divisions — pulling off a race in downtown Chicago is a daunting task unlike any the sanctioning body has faced. To grasp the challenges, NASCAR sent a team of folks to F1’s Miami Grand Prix and IndyCar races in downtown Detroit and Nashville.

The long-term implications are significant. If all goes well, it could mean street races in other urban areas within major metropolitan markets will be added to the schedule in the foreseeable future.

“Certainly, it’s going to be a big event that’s super important to the sport,” said owner‐driver Denny Hamlin. “Not just because of Chicago and that particular location, but can we pull this off somewhere else? So it’s more than just about Chicago. It’s certainly about, can we build an event, a temporary event, get in, get out of there, not disturb too much and put on a great show.”

Venturing into uncharted territory brings with it certain risks, and the Chicago street course offers its share.

By nature, such circuits don’t often feature a multitude of prime passing zones. The tight confines don’t lend themselves to frequent side-by-side racing, and with almost no runoff area, there is little margin for error — mistakes will likely result in an encounter into the wall or tire barrier. Also, stock cars are bigger than F1, Indy and sports cars, only exacerbating the situation.

“Survival. It’s going to be a survival race,” Kyle Busch said. “… It’s going to be a tight street course. That’s what tight street courses are.”

How Sunday’s race will unfold has been a frequent topic of discussion within the garage. Only within the past few weeks have drivers begun to figure out the nuances of the circuit, either on iRacing or via simulator rigs that Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota have at their facilities located in the Charlotte, N.C., area.

The track layout for this weekend’s Chicago Street Race. (Courtesy of NASCAR)

These sessions have produced varying opinions about the course and what may transpire, but there is one pervasive consensus.

“I think the racetrack is going to be tight in certain areas,” AJ Allmendinger said. “It’s going to be unique. You’re going to have to be really pinpoint accurate at all times. And if you’re not, you make a small mistake, you probably pay the price for it. So I think there’s going to be a lot of drama in the race. There’s going to be some good racing, there’s probably going to be a lot of yellow flags at times.”

Said Hamlin: “You just hope someone in front of you doesn’t make a mistake because you’re going to pile in there pretty heavy.”

Turn 1 is a particular section of the track that has drivers anticipating trouble. As the field comes down the frontstretch, they will funnel into a 90-degree left-hand turn that is expected to see drivers braking heavily with the strong likelihood they’re bouncing off one another jockeying for position.

NASCAR worked with drivers to come up with what it hopes is a solution to curb the expected chaos by shifting the restart zone from the frontstretch to before Turn 12, the final corner before the frontstretch. The intent is to spread the field out before it reaches Turn 1.

Out of Turn 1 comes a right-hand turn that leads into a three-corner sequence that has put drivers on alert, particularly Turns 4 and 5.

It doesn’t get much easier from there.

The remainder of the circuit features more tight turns, including four that are 90 degrees and require hard braking. To complete passes, drivers will have to capitalize on a competitor making a mistake or be willing to aggressively push it entering a corner. There are also notable surface changes, and sections of the course were so bumpy it necessitated a repave.

No wonder then that when you take everything into account there is a prevailing sense that chaos will ensue on Sunday. Big lumbering stock cars on a street course brings to mind the scene from “Tommy Boy” where Chris Farley’s character tries on the coat of the diminutive David Spade.

“There is going to be a lot of courage that is going to be taken,” Corey LaJoie said. “You’re gonna see the guys who commit to sending it — there’s gonna be several guys that commit to sending it and don’t come out the other side. So it’s gonna be definitely risk versus reward.”

But even if Sunday’s race does generate a high number of cautions, this doesn’t make the weekend a bust. Racing on a street course always presents challenges, regardless of the series. Building a track is complex. There is only so much area to work with inside a major metropolis; something all involved in the project — from NASCAR to the city of Chicago to the track designers — understood back on that cold November night in 2020.

“From the beginning, this was a, ‘Let’s sniff around this idea and see if this is a real thing that we all want to get behind,’” Myers said. “It was absolutely a test run for whether we can work together to do this. It was obvious to me that they were testing the waters for a real event here.”

(Top photo of iRacing’s 2021 imagining of the Chicago street course, which comes to life this weekend: Chris Graythen / Getty Images)