Brad Keselowski believes NASCAR Chicago Street Race opens up international opportunities

The Chicago Street Race was a one-of-a-kind event for NASCAR but racer Brad Keselowski thinks it could be the start of something new for the organization. That is the possibility of racing internationally.

“I think probably the biggest thing for me is last week opens up international, I think, more than anything else,” Keselowski said this weekend. “I don’t see doing that type of event in other places in the United States. But internationally, it probably opens some things up. If we were to go race internationally, specifically, in a different continent, I think we proved that there’s an opportunity to do that.”

Keselowski finished in 24th at the Grant Park 220, which was won by Shane van Gisbergen in his NASCAR debut.

One of the biggest questions about racing in Europe, which would be a likely start for NASCAR to start running races on a different continent, would be how to get the cars to the race track.

Keselowski was asked about the possibility of building the cars internationally instead of in the U.S.

“I would assume it’d be cheaper actually just to build the car here and ship it over there,” Keselowski said. “But that’s quite a bit further ahead of me as far as thinking is concerned. I haven’t gotten that far.”

While there is still plenty of logistics to figure out, Keselowski believes an international race can be done.

“I think there’s some pretty high feasibility that we can race in Europe or somewhere else and pull it off,” Keselowski said. “It’s not gonna be easy and you look at the Formula 1 guys. Typically when they do that they have breaks in their schedule and they run less races. The bigger challenge is for the people than it is, I think, for the cars.”

Keselowski isn’t the only one who has been talking about the possibility of NASCAR racing abroad in recent weeks.

Former F1 world champion Jenson Button talked about the possibility after he raced in the NASCAR Garage 56 car at the 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Button said NASCAR had created a buzz internationally with its performance at the race and should try and find a way to capitalize on it. But he said the organization should work on doing it as quickly as possible.

“I do think it can be big and doing a race next year would be great,” Button said at a press conference in June. “We have to get the jump on what we did at Le Mans. I think it has such a big following, it created so many memes, I saw the craze on social media.”