Street races in big downtown cities look great on TV, but they take a real toll on the host city. NASCAR found that out when it launched its Grant Park street course in 2023, sending Cup Series cars down Michigan Avenue in a race format the sport hadn’t really tried before. The event ran for a couple of years before pausing, and now it looks like the street-course experiment in Chicago is done.

NASCAR has decided not to bring the race back to Grant Park in 2027, choosing instead to keep its Chicago-area date at Chicagoland Speedway. The general assumption in the garage was that cost killed the idea. According to at least one city official, that’s not the full story.

Chicago Alderman Brian Hopkins said money was a factor, but not the main one. The bigger issue, according to him, was that the city and local alder-persons wanted NASCAR to move the race to a different summer weekend instead of running it over the 4th of July, as it had in prior years.

Hopkins estimated the split was roughly “75% scheduling and 25% money.” NASCAR had built the event around the Fourth of July weekend from the beginning, since the holiday brought strong TV viewership and extra energy around the race. But for people living and working downtown, that same weekend was one of the worst times to shut down major roads.

Setting up the temporary grandstands, walls, and fencing a street race needs isn’t quick. It means closing key downtown streets for days beforehand and a few more days after the race wraps up. Lollapalooza also takes over Grant Park not long after NASCAR’s weekend, adding more pressure on the city to reopen the park sooner rather than later. Eventually, city officials pushed back hard enough that NASCAR would have had to give up its holiday date to keep the race alive. That wasn’t something the sanctioning body was willing to do before locking in its 2027 schedule.

Cost wasn’t totally irrelevant either. NASCAR had state funding of $5 million per race for the event’s first three years, and reportedly looked into a bigger $15 million tourism grant from the state ahead of a possible 2027 return. That larger grant didn’t come through, as the state legislature kept funding at the original $5 million level. Given everything it costs to build a temporary street circuit from scratch each year, the race became a lot less financially appealing without the ratings boost from a holiday weekend broadcast.

With the city unwilling to move off its scheduling demands and the economics getting tighter, NASCAR decided it made more sense to stick with a location that already works: Chicagoland Speedway. Rather than reworking its entire national broadcast calendar around Windy City’s preferred dates, the sanctioning body shifted its focus back to the 1.5-mile oval in Joliet. The venue already has permanent grandstands and doesn’t require closing a single city street.

NASCAR says it plans to keep its regional office in Chicago and continue community programs there, even without a street race. It’s possible the series may look at street courses in other cities down the road, but for now, the mix of holiday scheduling demands and limited access was enough to close the book on Grant Park. Whether or not NASCAR returns to the Chicago Street Course in the future remains to be seen.

If not Chicago, which track gets a marquee date?

More than just viewership and finding new markets, a street race provided a new avenue for NASCAR to promote the sport. They tried to do it with the Clash at LA Coliseum, the international race in Mexico City and a trip to Naval Base Coronado.

Now that the street race in Chicago is off the books for 2027, it is likely that they would want a similar event take its place on the schedule. An international race to different country is a big undertaking that NASCAR wouldn’t want, at least for next season. So the ideal candidate is the race in San Diego.

NASCAR has already had a few discussions with Navy and the Naval Base regarding a return of racing for 2027. Lupo, the president of NASCAR San Diego, opened up about the possibility of Naval Base race. “We would very much like to be back in 2027.”

Given that NASCAR is yet to announce a few dates for the 2027 schedule, there is a possibility we might see them return to the Navy base after failing to secure the Chicago street race.