Risk vs. reward runs high on Chicago Street Course, where hazards, SVG loom

NASCAR Cup Series drivers came away with two major learnings from last year’s Chicago Street Race — one, that the strict demands of street-circuit racing presented a challenge, and two, how much Shane van Gisbergen was up for it.

Cup Series regulars — and the defending race winner who made the initials “SVG” a summer sensation in 2023 — are back for Round 2 in Sunday’s Grant Park 165, scheduled for Sunday at 4:30 p.m. ET (NBC, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App). There’s still some novelty for NASCAR’s top division in the street-circuit discipline, but most of the field now has at least a one-off experience after last year’s inaugural.

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That doesn’t mean it’s any easier, with crisis potentially looming at each corner.

“How many turns are there … 20? Then 20 of them,” Trackhouse Racing’s Ross Chastain said with a laugh last weekend, nearly doubling the 12-turn total for hyperbolic effect on where treachery can be found. “I swear, I didn‘t have a comfortable corner there last year. I just couldn‘t get comfortable … like I wasn‘t right off the bat, and it never came throughout the race. So yeah, looking for a lot more there and just being comfortable with it. I‘ve had a year to wrap my head around what that was like; those concrete cannons between the walls. Yeah, all were difficult.”

Comfort was in stingy supply during last year’s first go-round, in large part due to the confines of the circuit’s design. The borders around Chicago landmarks and thoroughfares shape a 2.2-mile course lined with barriers and tire packs, providing few areas where on-track miscues are easily forgiven.

Then there are the bumps from the heavily trafficked streets in the heart of a major metropolitan city of 2.6 million people, another hurdle that complicates how drivers hustle their cars in and out of the turns.

“Headache in a bottle,” Joey Logano, last weekend’s winner at Nashville, said with a laugh. “I mean, it’s just a tough one — lots of bumps, a very risky feeling. A lot of it’s just walls everywhere. There’s no runoff. So you overshoot a corner, as bumpy as it is, you lock up a tire, you slide, there’s no runoff, right?”

“It’s just super narrow,” said fellow Ford driver Chase Briscoe. “I say it’s narrow — it’s narrow for a lot of places we go, but for a street course, I thought it was honestly probably pretty wide. I just remember it being tighter in some areas than others. It was rough, really rough into some braking zones and just really unique. For a street course, you don’t think of having elevation but you come over that bridge a couple of times and the downhill braking, it’s just a hard place to pass, but it was really well done, I thought. It’s a track where you don’t get any break.”

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Pressed to single out one sector of the course that proved most technical last year, more than one driver mentioned the combination of Turns 3, 4 and 5 — the circuit’s closest point to Lake Michigan. The slight, faster bend of DuSable Lake Shore Drive feeds into tighter turns at Roosevelt, then Columbus before it heads back toward the course’s center.

“It’s the largest bumps, high-speed area, and the tightest and most unforgiving wall,” said Austin Cindric, a sixth-place finisher in last year’s Chicago debut, “and maybe I say that because I crashed there twice last year on Saturday, but definitely a big risk/reward section. Street-course racing is all about risk/reward — a lot of reward for being able to maximize the width of the race track, but obviously, that comes with a lot of risk when you’re dealing with concrete walls.”

The driver who dealt with the mouse-maze barriers most effectively was van Gisbergen, who launched into the stock-car consciousness with his rousing victory last year in his Cup Series debut. The New Zealand-born road-racing ace had built a fan following Down Under as a three-time champ in the Repco Supercars Championship circuit; his Windy City triumph last July came in the Trackhouse Project 91 entry that showcases international stars, and he more than delivered, becoming a bit of an overnight sensation.

The victory altered the trajectory of his racing career, and Trackhouse snapped him up for a NASCAR campaign this year in the States as part of a partnership with Kaulig Racing. He’s already scored two wins so far in his rookie Xfinity Series season, and he’ll be making his fourth Cup Series start of the year in Sunday’s Chicago showdown, driving the Kaulig No. 16 Chevy.

Chastain’s efforts to increase his comfort level on the Chicago streets have a natural input point with van Gisbergen, through their shared Trackhouse connection. Any and all tidbits about his technique have proved helpful.

“There‘s just so much data we can look at, so I can learn just as much hearing from him as I can looking through his stuff, how he made speed compared to me,” Chastain says. “And it‘s confidence, a lot of it is confidence. It‘s intentionally placing the car where he wanted to place it, and I was trying to place it kind of between the walls and he was placing it at the wall, maximizing left and right. Easy to say it, but really hard to do it.”

That task was made even more treacherous last year, once the skies cleared after historic race-day rain. Van Gisbergen excelled in the damp conditions left by Sunday’s torrent, with his fancy heel-toe footwork on the pedals making the difference in his battle down the stretch with runner-up Justin Haley.

It’s what earned him a nod of recognition when Logano was asked if Chicago’s unique challenge was somehow fun.

“Kind of, if you’re Shane. Everyone else in the field might not agree,” Logano said. “I mean, it just fell right into his wheelhouse really, really well. And he’s just really good at clipping the corners right at the edge. I mean, he didn’t leave any room for error, and he can hit it really well.”