Chicago Road Course Race Expecting Road-Clogging Pace

What’s Happening?

Chicago’s historic Grant Park- the location of presidential speeches, championship sports team celebrations, and music festivals, among other things- will be much tougher to get to when NASCAR rolls into town for its downtown road course race around the Fourth of July holiday.

In fact, it will be tough to reach for longer than just the race week, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. And Grant Park won’t be the only place that’s hard to get to.

The Chicago Street Race is coming up quickly, with the NASCAR Cup Series running the Grant Park 220 on July 2 and the Xfinity Series slated for July 1.

• “There’s no question that the inconvenience will be significantly more extensive than what we were initially led to believe,” — Chicago Alderman Brian Hopkins, when asked about the summer race and what it will do to traffic patterns.
• This comes as television ratings are lower, crowds are smaller, and there are questions about whether there are two many road courses — and do people in Chicago even want this race?
• The big question is, how will locals and even racing fans receive the inconvenience this speedy distraction brings? Should racing fans even care, since NASCAR races bring millions to the local economy each weekend it visits a venue, and isn’t it to be expected there will be some inconvenience?

On Your Screen

Grant pointed out on Reddit that this isn’t the first time the potential mess downtown has been brought up:

Spectral said on Reddit that basically if the city doesn’t like it, put it somewhere that will enjoy it:

Noah agreed with Spectral:

7Stringplayer had another way to look at it:

BeefInGR brought up the tourism angle: