NASCAR exec Ben Kennedy describes how Cup Series race in Mexico City originated

The 2025 NASCAR season will feature a Cup Series race that will take place at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City. On Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Venue & Racing Innovations Officer Ben Kennedy explained how the race came about.

“This is something we’ve talked about for a while,” Kennedy told Kevin Harvick on the show back in September. “We want to take our Cup Series, our most premier products and take it internationally. We had a number of different conversations. Ultimately, Mexico City came to the forefront, have a great relationship with the promoters down there. We’ve had the Xfinity Series race there back in ’05 to ’08.

“Just being in a market like Mexico City with over 20 million people in it is a huge opportunity to get our sport in front of a ton of new fans and new people. We’re excited about it. We know that this is only the start of our journey. …We have a lot of work to do for the next nine and a half months, but huge opportunity. …Just excited to see it on the schedule finally.”

Kennedy’s comments came shortly after the 2025 NASCAR schedule was released. Next year’s Mexico race will be the first international points event in the Cup Series’ modern history. It will take place on June 15 and will stream on Prime Video.

Ben Kennedy shares more on the NASCAR Mexico Cup Series race

“This has been on our radar for a long time,” Kennedy said in a press release. “We’ve been talking about the continued iteration of our schedule, right? You can go back a few years, went to new markets like Nashville and Austin, Texas. We went to the Coliseum for the Clash. … We went to our first street race in downtown Chicago, and this is going to be another first for us in a lot of ways. This is going to be certainly a monumental event for us, the first time we’re going south of the border.”

Kennedy said the partnership with Mexico City is a multiyear deal. “It’s huge,” Kennedy added. “When we talk as a leadership team about where we feel like our biggest growth opportunities as a sport is, international is always one of the first things that comes up. … We brought the Craftsman Truck Series to Canada for a number of years, we’ve had the Xfinity Series in Mexico. This is a monumental moment for our sport in the sense that this is our first step of really taking the Cup Series internationally.”