NASCAR’s best-laid plans for its first Cup Series street race were pushed to the limit in Chicago by a weekend deluge that left standing water on the pavement and raised questions among drivers about the safety of the event.
Sunday’s Grant Park 220 was thrown into uncertainty after a record amount of rain and lightning forced Saturday’s Xfinity Series race to be suspended after only 25 of a scheduled 55 laps had been completed. The rain continued Sunday, and NASCAR instituted a rarely used rule allowing it to declare that race official and Cole Custer the winner even though the race had not reached the halfway mark.
When the rain finally let up in the late afternoon, NASCAR decided to go ahead with the weekend’s marquee Cup Series event on a track that never fully dried. It was a situation that concerned drivers.
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“It’s tough,” Brad Keselowski said an hour before the scheduled start (via the Chicago Tribune). “It’s not what we wanted. We wanted a beautiful weekend that everybody can enjoy. But the cards are what they are, and we’ll play them as best as we can.”
The start came 90 minutes late, with drivers grumbling. “We cannot control god,” Denny Hamlin tweeted during the delay. “What we can control is our decisions and reactions to unforeseen circumstances. Please @NASCAR. Do not do this. We have too much momentum around this weekend to change the narrative now.”
Officials announced that the race would be shortened from 100 to 75 laps on the 2.2-mile, 12-turn track because of darkness, and it was on. Keselowski later said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the track’s grip.
“A lot of work and effort went into it,” he said. “The track only existed in computer models before Saturday morning, so that was the only frame of reference we had, and it certainly exceeded the computer models.”
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Crashes were unspectacular by NASCAR standards, and when the race finally ended, Shane van Gisbergen, a three-time Australian Supercars champion from New Zealand with plenty of experience in street racing, became the first driver to win his first Cup Series start since Johnny Rutherford won at Daytona in 1963.
Over the final 20 laps, van Gisbergen showed his street sense, passing Justin Haley with five laps to go for the win. Van Gisbergen had led right after a caution came out with fewer than 10 laps to go for Martin Truex Jr.’s crash, but NASCAR ruled the pass wasn’t complete before the caution came out. He held on for a green-white-checkered restart and was not challenged by Haley or Chase Elliott, who finished third.
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