NASCAR has been throwing ideas at the wall lately. Street races, dirt tracks, new markets, old venues coming back from the dead. Some of it has worked. Some of it has left fans wondering what they’re actually watching anymore. That’s something Joey Logano recently addressed.
Chicagoland Speedway’s return on July 5, seven years after NASCAR dropped it, is the perfect example of how messy that process can look from the outside. Logano, for one, thinks that confusion is actually the point.
Advertisement
“I think one of the best things we’re doing is not going to the same places all the time,” Logano said. “We’re spreading it out, and we’re going to the race fans.”
He is not wrong. Going to a race costs money for tickets, travel, hotels, and sometimes camping. The closer a track is to you, the cheaper it gets. Joey Logano’s logic is to take the races to the fans instead of making fans chase the races.
But Chicagoland’s story is a good reminder of why that’s harder than it sounds. At its peak in the early 2000s, the track packed in 75,000 to 85,000 fans routinely. By the late 2010s, that number was down to somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000. Empty seats everywhere. No one factor was at fault.
Advertisement
NASCAR built Chicagoland during its huge boom in the late 1990s. At the time, the sport was building a bunch of identical 1.5-mile ovals. Fans got tired of seeing the exact same track layout every week. They labeled them cookie-cutter tracks and just stopped showing up. The location was another big problem. Joliet is 45 miles away from Chicago. Casual sports fans living in the city simply weren’t going to make that long drive.
When the Chicago Street Race launched in 2023, it solved that problem directly. Three years of racing through downtown Grant Park, right in the middle of one of America’s biggest cities. Different crowd, different energy, different product entirely. Then, city negotiations stalled, and for 2026, NASCAR needed a placeholder to keep the market alive. Joliet got the call.
The reception was warmer than expected. Tickets were priced at $50, cheap by NASCAR standards, and the race came close to a sellout. On track, it delivered too. Denny Hamlin edged Kyle Larson for pole by 0.001 seconds. The racing was good. Suddenly, a temporary fix started looking like something worth keeping. Joey Logano touched on this when asked whether both Chicago venues could share the same season.
“There are a lot of places around the country that we don’t visit where there are a lot of NASCAR fans too,” he said.
Advertisement
That tension is exactly what NASCAR is working through right now for 2027. Talks with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office are ongoing. The street race looks likely to come back, but not in July. The city wants the event moved off Independence Day weekend after it caused headaches for residents and businesses. A late May date is the current target, which would leave the July 4th slot open for Joliet.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. confirmed some suspicions. Both races on the same calendar are genuinely being discussed. One oval, one street course, same market, two completely different audiences. The oval for the camping, multi-day, core racing fan. The street race for the corporate crowd and the city tourists who would never drive to Joliet.
It is not as contradictory as it sounds. And if it works, it is exactly the kind of thinking Joey Logano was pointing to, not the same places, not the same fans, not the same experience twice.
Trending Articles
Advertisement
The post “Not Going To The Same Places”- Joey Logano Drops Blunt Verdict on NASCAR’s Rumored Chicago Schedule appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Read the full article here