Jeff Gordon says opportunities 'are endless' for NASCAR after Chicago Street Race

NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon believes the possibilities are endless for the sport coming off the success of the Chicago Street Race on July 2.

“The opportunities are sort of endless,” Gordon recently said, via Bob Pockrass of Fox Sports. “If we could put on a street course race in downtown Chicago, then where can we go next? What can we do next? It certainly comes at a good time as you look at TV negotiations [for 2025 and beyond) and trying to build the sport and what the future looks like.”

The first-ever NASCAR Cup Series city street race delivered in a big way, averaging a Total Audience Delivery (TAD) of 4.795 million viewers. The Grant Park 220 was the most-watched Cup Series race on NBC in six years (Indianapolis in 2017), as well as the network’s most-streamed NASCAR race ever. Viewership peaked at 5.383 million TV-only viewers from 9:15-9:30 p.m. ET when Shane van Gisbergen took the checkered flag to notch his first victory in his Cup Series debut.

Fighting through the conditions, it was van Gisbergen, the New Zealand native, who came out on top. He chased down Chase Elliott and Justin Haley in the final laps on a rainy evening to become the first driver to win his Cup Series debut since Johnny Rutherford in the second qualifying race at Daytona in 1963.

Will NASCAR expand street race outside Chicago?

While NASCAR could experiment with a street race in another city, it likely won’t happen next year, Pockrass wrote. Kevin Harvick, however, feels that future schedules will be impacted given how the inaugural street race turned out.

“It has to have an impact just because if you look at it, it really felt old school to me as you walk into the hotel and you talk to people and the buzz in the city, and they did an excellent job of laying out the racetrack and the way that that it all functioned,” Harvick said. “It was a great event and promoted really well. And so I think it just gives you a lot of flexibility to go and do things in the future at really any city that that you want to that’ll have you.”