NASCAR completed a two-day Goodyear tire test at Chicagoland Speedway on Tuesday and Wednesday in preparation for the sport’s return to the 1.5-mile facility just outside Chicago, Illinois, during Independence Day weekend.
Representatives from all three Cup Series manufacturers took part in the test: Ryan Blaney (Ford), Kyle Larson (Chevrolet) and Denny Hamlin, while Justin Allgaier (Chevrolet) and Brandon Jones (Toyota) put down laps for the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.
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The test marked the first time Chicagoland had seen cars on track since 2019.
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“You’ve raced so much between then and now that I didn’t really remember a whole lot of the track other than just the big bump in one and some bumps in [Turns] 3 and 4, and those are all still there,” Larson told media at the track. “It’s just cool. It’s really fast. A lot faster pace than what I remember the old car being here. We’re on the throttle quite a bit, but it’s also not as hot as what it was the last times we were here. It’ll be hot when we come back, so the pace should slow down.”
Larson had quite the history at Chicagoland. Before piloting the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports, he was on the short end of two dramatic finishes in the most recent Cup races at the oval, finishing runner-up to Kyle Busch in 2018 and now-Hendrick teammate Alex Bowman in the last Chicagoland event in 2019.
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Larson said he reviewed some of those highlights to get a sense of how to approach the test.
“I was more just trying to get out of it seeing what lines we were running, which we could run kind of everywhere,” Larson said. “I didn’t really remember that. You could run all lanes. It’s aged and gotten rougher, I’m sure, since then. The bumps in [Turns] 3 and 4 are really, really rough. So I don’t know how much we’ll be able to move. I’m sure eventually we’ll move around, but it’s hard right now as the pace is so fast to move around and commit. The little bit I’ve moved up just a few times in 3 and 4, like one lane, I’ve bottomed out. So it’s pretty sketchy. Just trying to find lanes that you think your car can maybe go through will be beneficial.”
Blaney, originally from the Midwest, was fond of Chicagoland before it came off the schedule and added the importance of NASCAR continuing to race near a major metropolitan area like Chicago.
“One of the neatest things about this place, I thought the surface was at a really good point of like, very well aged, to where we’re going to use the whole race track,” Blaney said. “Tire falloff is going to be pretty big, especially when we come back in the summer. So we’re going to be able to use everything of the race track, which is good, but that’s always nice when you have mile-and-a-halfs that are wide. I just remember it puts on really good races, and the curved backstretch is different, but I have a lot of fun memories about this place.
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“I was personally hurt a little bit when this place got taken off the calendar. It was nice for a few years to go to the streets of Chicago, but it’s nice that we still have a race in Illinois here, close to Chicago, close to the city. I was just happy that this track came back because I thought it always did a great job and draws a good crowd and puts on a good race too.”
Seven years removed from action, but Chicagoland is more than ready to host the coveted Fourth of July weekend on the NASCAR calendar, and the roar of Cup Series and O’Reilly Series cars will inject the racing spirit back into Joliet, Illinois.
“It looks great,” Larson said. “The track surface itself, I think, too, is in a better place than I expected it to be. I’m sure they have had to pull weeds and things like that. But yeah, it looks good. I think it’s a completely raceable facility and I’m excited to get here in a couple months.”
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