NASCAR COO breaks silence on uncertainty over Chicago Street Race’s future

The future of Chicago Street Race is undecided as NASCAR COO conformed that they are only focused on the 2025 edition.

NASCAR COO breaks silence on uncertainty over Chicago Street Race’s future

NASCAR Chicago Xfinity Street Race 2024 (Via wtop.com)

One of the biggest gambles NASCAR has taken recently was investing over $50 million a season to host the first ever street race of the sports’ history at Chicago in 2023. Despite the issue with weather, the first edition of the event was a massive success and 2024 saw similar success with impressive TV rating.

The race will be in the NASCAR schedule for the upcoming 2025 season, but no details has been revealed about the future of the events beyond next season. COO Steve O’Donnell has talked about the topic recently and asserted that at the moment they are focused on building a momentum for the 2025 event and nothing more.

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For us, we’re just looking at 2025. It’ll be the third year of a three-year run and each year we’ve wanted to build upon the momentum that we have. We’ve learned things each and every year – it’s our first street race, a lot of learnings came from that. A lot of weather challenges as well. …

Steve O’Donnell said via SBJ.

Further talking about the point, he revealed that some changes are made to race for the upcoming season and expect it continue the evolution of the sport. Despite the future promises, their focus is limited to making the event successful.

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We’ve made some tweaks to the event format and continuing to evolve that as well, so we’ll get through the event, see where things are, but concentrating on 2025 and making that event as successful as it can be.

Steve O’Donnell added.

NASCAR has big marketing plans for 2025  

In the same interview, O’Donnell has revealed new marketing plans for NASCAR. This time the sanctioning body is going to emphasis on individual drivers and will cater the fans with more behind the scenes look for the fans. The drivers would also be rewarded from the $10 to $20 million pool.

2024 Daytona 500
2024 Daytona 500 (Via NASCAR.com)

You’re going to see a lot more focus on our individual drivers, and that doesn’t mean just Cup…So you’ll see us focus more on personalities and really give the fans that behind-the-scenes look into each one of the people who participate in putting on the great racing.

Steve O’Donnell said.

The comments from Steve O’Donnell shows NASCAR is looking to benefit from marketing its drivers more to masses. In order for this to succeed, they should let the drivers to show their true personality as limiting them from it won’t garner the attention NASCAR is looking for.