NASCAR is swinging for the fences on the streets of Chicago
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
It was 74 years and two weeks ago when NASCAR ran the first race of its Strictly Stock division, what we now know as the Cup Series. In the years since, over 2,696 races, those stock cars have rumbled around ovals of dirt, asphalt and concrete, over road courses, through an Atlantic ocean spray, between sand dunes, and even inside ballparks, football stadiums and across an airport tarmac in New Jersey.
This weekend, though, those machines and the drivers within them will navigate a raceway unlike anywhere or anyone before them. They will steer their way through the Loop Community of Chicago, the first true street course ever run by the world’s preeminent stock car series.
These cars weren’t built for this. Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive weren’t built for them. The racers seem to be worried about the course’s raciness and the cockpit heat produced by the special mufflers that will be affixed to the exhaust systems that will be on their cars for this race. Why? Because of the complaints from a not small number of Chicagoans who like to spend their Independence Day weekend hanging out Grant Park, a little irritated about 800-horsepower machines running red lights and shaking walls all weekend, especially the walls of museums covered in fine art.
So, a question: Why even do this?
OK, an answer. And it comes from a man who knows a little something about turning left and right in a high-end racing machine on the same streets where regular folks do the same in city buses and minivans.
“Why not?” says Jenson Button, the former F1 superstar who made 16 starts in the Monaco Grand Prix, including a win during his 2009 world championship season. He’ll be making his second Cup Series appearance this weekend after finishing 37th in his debut in Austin on March 26. “I think it’s great that they’re willing to attract something different, and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. It’s one race on the calendar.”
It might not work. But do you know what? It might work beautifully. Like, literally beautiful. Brightly colored NASCAR Next Gen machines banging doors and hammering down Columbus Drive with the Chicago skyline in the background? That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?
“At the very least, it’s going to look cool, right?” said Ross Chastain, who won for just the first time in 2023 last weekend at Nashville Superspeedway. “I think that willingness to try something different, that probably wasn’t easy for NASCAR, but they’ve certainly been doing it a lot lately and for the most part, yeah, it’s worked out.”
That willingness is still very new. For seemingly forever, the Cup Series schedule went to the same racetracks on the same weekends to run the same races. That’s not a terrible way to go about your business, establishing routines for fans and teams, but it’s only good when it’s working, and it for a long time it did. Then, it didn’t. The fear for NASCAR brass, who admittedly had thrown too much change at their fanbase during the mid-2000s — see: Car of Tomorrow, leaving traditional markets for new racetracks out West, a constantly changing postseason format, even an internal ban on booking country music acts — was that breaking away from the traditional schedule might feel like a history of too many extreme makeovers repeating itself.
“Mindful change is the goal. New ideas that will get people excited, but ideas with roots that come from what made NASCAR great in the first place,” NASCAR president Steve Phelps explained during a preseason chat in his Daytona office. “We all acknowledge concerns and hesitation.”
When they finally got past those concerns and hesitation, though, wow, did they really get past them. Like Chastain wall-riding the final turn at Martinsville last fall.
The Chicago street course is only the latest rollout amid a five-year stretch of “Let’s give this try” ideas that not so long ago NASCAR never would have even considered.
First came the infield layout at Charlotte Motor Speedway that made “Roval” a real word. That was followed by covering Bristol Motor Speedway in dirt. Then the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was moved from the oval to the road course and from August to July. The season finale shifted to Phoenix after 18 years at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Lights at Martinsville Speedway; adding more road courses; building a temporary oval inside the L.A. Coliseum for the preseason Busch Light Clash; going back to the track where Chastain just won; looking at another Nashville date at another track, the legendary Fairgrounds; and the pièce de resistance of this racing renaissance, taking the now-mobile NASCAR All-Star Race and dropping it into North Wilkesboro Speedway, a track that had been closed for nearly three decades.
“I think that on paper, it might feel like a lot, and it is a lot,” confessed Marcus Smith in May, the CEO of Speedway Motorsports Inc. (SMI), owners of 11 racetracks that host Cup events, including the nucleus of those changes in Bristol, Charlotte, North Wilkesboro and Nashville. “But you also might hit a home run. And for all of the changes made, if you really look, we’ve all worked very hard to ensure that a familiar foundation is still there.”
He’s not wrong. Although some of their dates have been shuffled and at least one facility, California Speedway, will be offline in 2024, a whopping 21 racetracks that hosted points-paying Cup Series races in 2019 were still on the schedule this year. And although the downtown Chicago street course is new, the market is not. Chicagoland Speedway, located in Joliet, Illinois, hosted 19 Cup Series races from 2001 to 2019.
“I believe what is exciting about what is happening now is the enthusiasm to try stuff,” Smith continued, pointing to the racetrack behind him, resurrected North Wilkesboro. “Swing for the fences. You might swing and miss big. But when you connect, you might connect big, too.”
To that point, some of those grandiose ideas have worked. Some haven’t. A substantial chunk of them were testament to “necessity is the mother of invention” ideas that were born from the chasm of the 2020 pandemic. It was NASCAR that returned to facilities and televisions first among all major American sports. Determined to get in a full 36-race season despite going dark for nearly 10 weeks, Phelps and his team bunkered into a Daytona conference room and threw every idea against the wall. They booked doubleheaders and midweek races. Somehow, it worked.
It also kicked open a door that had already been cracked.
“People forget now, but that 2020 schedule was already full of big changes even before the pandemic,” recalled Ben Kennedy, NASCAR’s senior vice president of racing development and strategy, earlier this spring. “The Brickyard and season finale moves were already on the books for that season. So was the doubleheader at Pocono Raceway and Martinsville under the lights. And our riskiest idea, that started in the fall of 2019.”
He is speaking of the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum. Kennedy, then the just-promoted VP of racing development, was only 27 years old and less than two years removed from his final Xfinity Series start as a driver. When he met with the operators of the nearly century-old home of the Olympics and the USC Trojans, they thought he was inquiring about hosting a NASCAR cooperate event. Then he told them he wanted to build a racetrack inside their football stadium.
“To me, that’s it. That’s the whole thing. Be bold. Why not?” says Joey Logano, who raced against Kennedy nine times between the Xfinity and Trucks Series. “It’s not trying crazy stuff just for the sake of trying it, but ideas that will feel like NASCAR. If it doesn’t work, OK, don’t do it again. But if it does, then it should be all that you want it to. Create something that old school fans will be interested in, but also grab other people’s attention.”
The inaugural event the L.A. Coliseum did that. It created a preseason buzz among established fans and casual TV viewers suffering from a post-football hangover that was palpable two weeks later during Daytona Speedweeks. It also opened up conversations with other potential nontraditional venues. Like, say, the downtown of America’s third-largest city.
“The Chicago event is here because of what we did in Los Angeles,” Kennedy, now 31, explained in May. “The conversation about that event started almost immediately following the 2022 Busch Light Clash, and now we are here. It’s exciting when ideas come to fruition, for everyone.”
It was Kennedy’s great-grandfather, Bill France, who founded NASCAR 75 years ago and as its first president booked racing events wherever they would have him, from long-ago demolished road courses to horse racing tracks and even Chicago’s Soldier Field, home of the Bears. Kennedy’s grandfather, Bill France Jr., streamlined that schedule during the 1970s and created the baseline calendar that the Cup Series largely stuck to for its greatest decades of growth. It was his mother, Lesa France Kennedy, who was the leading pioneer of finding new markets and venues for the sport during the 1990s and 2000s, with some huge hits (see: Kansas Speedway, Chicagoland Speedway) and some huge misses (shuttered exploratory projects in Seattle, Denver and New York).
Now, with that DNA and with the cooperation of the NASCAR Steves (Phelps and COO O’Donnell) as well as Marcus Smith and SMI, Kennedy sits in rooms full of people who are excited to figure out what’s next and to have a discourse on big-swing ideas. Finally. Like Kennedy, though, those people all have their own deep-rooted NASCAR DNA that is always whispering in their ears …
“If it feels like a great idea and you have the means to try it, then try it,” Kennedy says his inner voice tells him. “But what makes it a great idea for us, no matter how out-of-the-box it might be, does it still feel like NASCAR? It needs to. Because if you strike that balance, then it’s hard to lose.”
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David Purdum
Members of Congress sent a letter to Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred on Friday, expressing concern over a “new integrity crisis” facing American sports and asking for answers about the alleged betting scheme that led to the recent indictments of two Cleveland Guardians pitchers.
Members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which oversees professional sports, called the allegations against Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz “markedly more serious” than other recent betting incidents in baseball. Federal prosecutors on Sunday indicted Clase and Ortiz and accused them of rigging individual pitches over multiple games so gambling associates could profit on wagers.
Sens. Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell, who lead the committee, questioned why Clase’s alleged actions, which began in May 2023, were not discovered for two years. They contrasted the case with that of former major leaguer Tucupita Marcano, who was banned in 2024 for betting on baseball.
“How did MLB catch Marcano and ban him for life but failed to notice Clase allegedly rigging pitches for two years?” the letter states. “The integrity of the game is paramount. MLB has every interest in ensuring baseball is free from influence and manipulation. … But in light of these recent developments, MLB must clearly demonstrate how it is meeting its responsibility to safeguard America’s pastime.”
The committee members asked when and how MLB was made aware of the alleged activity by Clase and Ortiz and for documentation detailing the league’s betting policies and details of any other betting-related investigations since Jan. 1, 2020. The committee requested the information and documentation by Dec. 5.
ESPN has reached out to MLB for comment. On Monday, MLB announced that its sportsbook partners had agreed to place a $200 limit on all bets involving individual pitches and prohibit such wagers from being included in parlays. The measures were taken to reduce the amount that could be won from pitch-level bets and therefore decrease the incentive of manipulation.
The same committee sent a letter to the NBA in October, asking for information related to that league’s handling of the alleged betting scandal that led to the indictments of Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, former player and coach Damon Jones and Miami Heat veteran guard Terry Rozier.
“An isolated incident of game rigging might be dismissed as an aberration, but the emergence of manipulation across multiple leagues suggests a deeper, systemic vulnerability,” the committee wrote. “These developments warrant thorough scrutiny by Congress before misconduct issues become more widespread.”
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Michael Rothstein
Testimony in the wrongful death lawsuit against the Los Angeles Angels underscores the difficulties team attorneys face convincing the jury they were unaware of addiction concerns before employee Eric Kay provided a fentanyl-laced pill that killed pitcher Tyler Skaggs in 2019.
The court case, now entering its sixth week, continues to focus on the team’s handling of Kay’s drug addiction treatment and whether officials did enough to protect Skaggs as Kay’s behavior became increasingly strange, causing Kay’s wife and some Angels employees to raise questions of drug abuse.
Kay was present in Skaggs’ hotel room the night he overdosed on alcohol and opioids, less than a month after Kay returned to work from a drug addiction treatment program. In Kay’s 2022 criminal trial, witnesses testified that Kay distributed pills to other players.
The team doctor testified last week that he prescribed more than 600 opioid pills to Kay over several years before learning how addictive the pills could be.
Contradictory testimony by current and former Angels representatives has sharpened scrutiny about what the Angels knew — and whether officials relayed concerns about Kay to Major League Baseball. Among the trial’s key elements in the past two weeks:
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Deborah Johnston, the Angels vice president of human resources, testified Monday that the team worked with MLB to address Kay’s addiction, despite her own deposition and previous testimony by other Angels officials saying they had no knowledge of any such coordination.
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MLB sent a statement to ESPN denying any knowledge of or involvement in Kay’s treatment. In front of the judge after jurors left the courtroom on Wednesday, the Skaggs family attorneys accused Johnston of committing perjury, a serious allegation. Angels attorneys immediately denied the perjury accusation.
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Angels officials testified they believed Kay’s problems came from prescribed medication to address mental health issues, while clubhouse employees testified they either witnessed or believed Kay had a problem with drugs.
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Angels officials testified they believed Kay suffered from bipolar disorder even though Kay’s medical records when he entered rehabilitation in April 2019 showed no record of medication to treat bipolar disorder. Kay’s ex-wife, Camela, testified she was not aware of a bipolar diagnosis.
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The team doctor, Craig Milhouse, testified that he prescribed Kay 600 pills of the opioids Norco and Vicodin over a 44-month period between 2009 and 2013.
The crux of the case is whether the Angels knew Kay was abusing drugs and providing them to players, including Skaggs while working in his official capacity. Kay is serving 22 years in federal prison for providing the drug that killed Skaggs in a Texas hotel room on July 1, 2019. The team contends he and Skaggs were acting privately in their off time when the overdose occurred.
The plaintiffs claim the Angels put Skaggs in harm’s way by continuing to employ Kay when his behavior showed warning signs of drug abuse. Angels officials say they are not responsible for Skaggs’ death, were not aware of his drug use and that it was Skaggs’ reckless decision to mix alcohol with illicit drugs that killed him. Officials also testified they were not aware Kay was providing drugs to players when Skaggs died.
The Skaggs family is seeking $118 million in estimated lost wages, in addition to potential punitive damages.
Johnston testified last week that the franchise had worked with MLB to get Kay help for his drug addiction. It’s the first time an Angels official suggested MLB was informed of Kay’s problem — a major bone of contention on the question of team responsibility.
Johnston said that when the Angels investigate potential use of illegal substances on team property, one option is immediate termination, depending on the findings. “Another option is to work with MLB, as we did in this case, and with our physician, Dr. [Erik] Abell,” she stated. Abell was the team’s liaison with MLB for such issues.
Johnston also testified that Kay was drug-tested under MLB’s policies, not those of the Angels.
In a text-messaged statement to ESPN about the perjury accusation, Angels’ attorney Todd Theodora wrote: “The accusation that Ms. Johnston committed perjury is completely false and defamatory. Her testimony was truthful based on several text messages she was recently shown demonstrating that Dr. Abell was treating Eric Kay.”
He added that Johnston “did not make any statements about whether Dr. Abell reported this further to MLB.”
An MLB spokesperson denied the league knew of Kay’s drug use or was involved with Kay’s treatment.
In separate weekend comments to ESPN, Theodora and lead plaintiffs attorney Rusty Hardin argued about the perjury issue, with Theodora characterizing the absence of a ruling by the judge on the accusation as a win for his side, while Hardin insisted that no ruling means the issue remains alive — including plaintiffs’ efforts to get MLB testimony.
California-based civil attorney Geoffrey Hickey told ESPN that perjury can only be proven if Johnston “willingly and knowingly” made a false statement under oath. Hickey said Hardin has a “good-faith argument,” but he doesn’t think Johnston’s statements rise to the level of perjury.
Johnston testified in a September pretrial deposition that no one had reported Kay’s drug use to MLB. She explained Monday she “learned additional information” about the Angels’ communications with MLB after giving her deposition. She said she couldn’t remember the exact document where she learned the information.
Kay’s immediate superior, Tim Mead, and the Angels’ traveling secretary, Tom Taylor, testified earlier in the trial that Abell worked with Kay but made no mention of reporting his case to MLB.
Team doctor Milhouse testified that he believed Abell, the team’s sports psychologist, was the liaison to MLB for such an issue. MLB documents state that player drug issues were subject to investigation and disciplinary follow-up by the office of the MLB commissioner.
While Angels officials testified they never saw Kay take illicit drugs, former clubhouse attendant Kris Constanti testified that Kay told him he was taking Norco. Another ex-clubhouse attendant, Vince Willet, testified he saw Kay crush and then snort a pill in the Angels’ clubhouse kitchen during spring training.
Former clubhouse manager Keith Tarter testified that he suspected Kay was using drugs and that Kay told him in 2019 he was concerned because his supply of Suboxone, a drug to treat opioid dependence, was running out. Tarter said he never saw Kay actually use drugs.
Milhouse testified he didn’t learn about the true addictive nature of opioids until 2014 or 2015. He stopped prescribing them for Kay in 2013.
Camela Kay testified that after her ex-husband had a breakdown at Yankees Stadium the same year, he stated in front of Taylor and Mead he was taking five Vicodin a day. Taylor denied it, and Mead said he didn’t recall the conversation. Milhouse also said that during 2009-2013, he typically only prescribed opioids on a short-term basis and that he had put other patients on similar treatment regimens and quantities as Kay. Milhouse testified that he considered the use of opioids five times a day to be an addiction.
The trial continues in Orange County Superior Court this week, with the witness schedule including Skaggs’ widow, Carli, and mother, Debbie Hetman.
Two jurors have already been excused — leaving two alternates for the remainder of the case, which is slated to go to the jury in mid-December.
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