Other than the early cautions that sent the Xfinity Series’ Loop 121 race off at a snail’s pace, the weather delays that had spectators and pretty much everyone else downtown shrugging their shoulders at one another for what felt like forever, the eventual postponement of the race until Sunday morning and the cancellation of an evening concert by the Chainsmokers, everything about Chicago’s first official day in the NASCAR business was a rockin’-and-rollin’ success.
OK, maybe not everything. Cole Custer led all 25 laps before NASCAR waved the white flag on trying to get the rest of the race in. We might not be the world’s biggest racing experts in this town, but even we know zero passing at the front leaves something to be desired in the excitement department. More of the same over the remaining 30 laps would be a real drag.
But, hey, maybe Sunday’s main attraction — the Cup Series’ Grant Park 220, set to start at 4:05 p.m. — will be better. A new day, a new chance for NASCAR’s Chicago scene to play out beautifully.
Denny Hamlin, the pole winner for Sunday, doesn’t believe the main race will be bogged down by an absence of passing on the track. He sees Turns 1 through 6 — out of 12 in all — as the half of the course where aggressive moves will be made.
“It is a tight race track,” Hamlin said, “but it is what it is and I think it’s got three to four major passing zones.”
See? There’s hope.
Until you’ve been to a NASCAR race, you simply can’t grasp what it’s like: the colorful cars, the sweeping pageantry, the face-melting noise, the sheer size of a track layout, the full-frontal assault of advertising banners. If you went Saturday, though, you experienced so little of it that it might not truly stick with you.
Plus, it was one of those muggy days when a person asks, “Do I really want to walk 11 feet to that souvenir stand and risk sweating for the next 36 hours?”
And if you think those in attendance were hot and uncomfortable — and by God, they were — it was even worse, so much worse, for those piloting the 700-horsepower machines. The heat was on a list of nits Cup Series’ drivers picked that also included an unusually bumpy track, slick street surfaces and so little margin for error, any mistake could mean an immediate end to any driver’s day.
“It’s bumpier than any track we’ve been on,” Joey Logano said. “It’s just sketchy. If there’s one word for it, it’s ‘sketchy.’ The intensity you have to bring to go fast, you have to run so hard to go fast that there’s no margin. It’s just really, really hard, like probably one of the hardest things I’ve done in a race car.”
Tyler Reddick finished second in qualifying despite his difficulty in Turn 4, where cars come off Lake Shore Drive with a right turn onto Roosevelt Road.
“You’re going from brand-new asphalt [on the Outer Drive] to just how rough and broken up that bridge [on Roosevelt] has gotten, and it really makes it stressful,” Reddick said. “Every single lap, you’re holding your breath going through not knowing if you’re going to make it or not.”
And then there’s the absence of “runoff room” that has had a lot of these drivers on edge. Think of it as a stretch on an oval track where a driver can run off to safety — into a grassy infield, for example — if he gets into trouble. In Chicago, one false move and you’re meeting a wall.
“You’re going 150 miles an hour down a street and you’re looking at a 90-degree turn in front of you with no runoff?” Logano said. “If you overcook the entry [and], you wreck. You’re done.”
Will fewer cars than usual finish Sunday’s main race?
“Yes, 100%,” Logano said. “I think what you’re going to see is everybody is going to be either wrecked or cautious. I think if you can see the checkered flag, you’ve probably had a pretty decent day.”
But back to the heat — it’s miserable inside those cars.
NASCAR is using mufflers — highly unusual — for these races to reduce noise and the attendant vibrations by about 10%, in part for the protection of pieces in the Art Institute and inhabitants of the Shedd Aquarium. But blocking air flow to the exhaust in one of these cars turns a driver into a TV dinner.
“The cars are way too hot,” Justin Haley said. “Big miss there with the mufflers and the exhaust. A lot of drivers are really struggling, so it’s going to be a tough race.”
In Haley’s car are multiple fans pointed straight at him. In his helmet are multiple blowers intended to cool his noggin, but it wasn’t close to cutting it Saturday and that was just practice and qualifying.
“I don’t know what the fix is,” he said. “We just have to deal with it.”
How psyched is Logano for being overcooked inside his racing suit on top of everything else?
“Oh, my God, it’s going to be absolutely brutal,” he said. “The mufflers on our cars suck. I don’t know what else to say about that. It’s horrible. And it’s a horrible job [driving with them]. It’s miserable.”
