The Chicago Street Course isn’t a typical road course.
In fact, it isn’t even a typical street course, given the level of treachery in several of the high-speed corners—notably Turns 1, 5 and 6.
There is no margin for error in those corners. Miss the apex by a small margin, and you’ll head straight into tire barriers, with little hope of continuing without assistance.
“Yeah, it’s different in its own way,” said Trackhouse Racing’s Shane van Gisbergen, who won the inaugural Chicago Street Race in his 2023 NASCAR debut. “The hardest part here is the no runoff … like Turn 1 and Turn 5. Going straight into a wall at the biggest braking zones is pretty daunting.
“So, yeah, normally you have runoff in the tricky corners, so that’s probably the hardest part about this place.”
Defending NASCAR Cup champion Joey Logano, who finished eighth in the inaugural Chicago Street Race and 23rd last year, acknowledged the risk inherent in turning high-speed laps on the 2.2-mile, 12-turn circuit.
“When you look at Turns 1 and 6, you have no runoff, so there aren’t many street courses that I know of at least, where you have long straightaways with literally no runoff, so the risk is huge here,” Logano said. “When you go to push it, you send it in there a little bit too far, and we’ve seen that’s where a car goes straight right into the tire barrier.
“You don’t have the ability to make mistakes and just turn around and get back going again. It’s a little different than other road courses, where a lot of times you’ll maybe overdrive the car to find the limits in practice and stuff like that. You can’t afford to do that here.”
Road course ace Michael McDowell agreed that the layout of the circuit puts extraordinary stress on the NASCAR Cup Series drivers, who will compete in the Grant Park 165 on Sunday (2 p.m. ET on TNT, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“There’s just a very condensed schedule,” McDowell said. “So I feel like you’re at that 80-85 percent in practice, and you’re getting your rhythm, and you are hitting your marks, then you’re pushing yourself a little bit more and a little bit more.
“Then you go qualify, and you throw all that out the window and just put it on the edge. You have to do that for a few laps here, I feel like. So it’s an adrenaline rush, but it is stressful though.
“You never feel like you put your guard down, you stay very tense, you stay very locked in that high level of concentration, because it’s an inch left or right and you miss it. But it’s fun when you get it right.”
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