NASCAR designates cutoff time for Chicago Street Race amid rainy conditions

NASCAR has announced that Sunday’s Grant Park 165 Chicago Street Race has a cutoff time of 9:20 p.m. ET.

The cutoff time is in place should the race not reach its advertised distance. That is certainly a big if at this point as rain has impacted the start of the Chicago Street race.

“Should the race go to darkness, the race end time is 8:20p CT,” Bob Pockrass of FOX Sports added. “At that point, there will be 2 laps to go when the leader next passes the start-finish line. Then after the leader completes a full lap after that time, it will be white flag, and then checkered flag (no overtime).”

Before the field could even get to green, rain started to fall in downtown Chicago. That prompted NASCAR to permit teams to use the wet-weather tires if they wanted to, which a handful of teams did with the track damp in some spots.

NASCAR puts Chicago Street Race under red flag

Rainfall returned near the end of Stage 1 with Shane van Gisbergen out in front. NASCAR ran the remainder of the stage out and most teams went with the wet-weather tires for Stage 2. Of course, Stage 2 barely got going before first Bubba Wallace spun out and then a sliding Chase Briscoe clipped van Gisbergen, bringing out of the caution.

“Turned it in and looked pretty good and then just got smashed by someone,” van Gisbergen said. “Gutting. Wendy’s ‘Saucy Nuggs’ Camaro was really good. We were in the lead for a lot of that race and felt good taking off in the rain. So, that sucks. It’s an unfortunate mistake by him [Briscoe], I’m sure he didn’t mean it but yeah, when he clipped me there was nothing I could do.”

Visibility was limited with the track saturated, leading to NASCAR putting the race under the red flag.