NASCAR COO Steve O’Donnell addresses uncertain future of Chicago Street Race

The 2025 season marks the third year of the NASCAR Chicago Street Race, but the future of the event looks uncertain beyond that. COO Steve O’Donnell recently talked about the first-ever Cup Series street race.

The Chicago Street Race is a unique event in NASCAR. Street racing is something that has only ever been done in sports car racing and open-wheel such as F1 and IndyCar. To put stock cars on the streets of Chicago is a big deal.

Speaking with Adam Stern of Sports Business Journal, O’Donnell highlighted the positive parts of the race. However, challenges remain.

“For us, we’re just looking at 2025. It’ll be the third year of a three-year run and each year we’ve wanted to build upon the momentum that we have,” O’Donnell told Stern. “We’ve learned things each and every year – it’s our first street race, a lot of learnings came from that. A lot of weather challenges as well. … We’ve made some tweaks to the event format and continuing to evolve that as well, so we’ll get through the event, see where things are, but concentrating on 2025 and making that event as successful as it can be.”

That doesn’t sound confident for a continued event in Chicago. But that was never the goal. NASCAR wanted to show that it could host a street race first. Now they can take that concept pretty much anywhere that will have them.

Does that possibly mean a race in Dallas? IndyCar is going there for an event around AT&T Stadium. Or could it be a race in California? San Diego has been viewed as a potential market.

NASCAR Chicago Street Race enters year three

If there was one wish I could have for next season, it would be a perfectly sunny and warm July 4th weekend in Chicago. Rain has plagued the NASCAR Chicago Street Race. It is time for it to have a chance to be what it was meant to be.

This isn’t just a race. NASCAR wanted to put on an entire festival. Something that heavy rains have ruined the last two seasons. Music, food, racing, it’s an entire party in and of itself that happens to have a race going on.

In the Xfinity Series this year, it was perfect. Sunny and bright. Shane van Gisbergen showed everyone once again why he is the best street course racer in NASCAR. He dueled Kyle Larson who believed SVG was simply toying with him for most of the race.

Despite the weather issues, the Chicago Street Race puts eyes on NASCAR. It gives the sport great media coverage and has been fairly successful in the face of adversity. Is year three when we get the perfect race weekend?