With NASCAR’s schedule flirting more and more with road and street courses, the spotlight has increasingly turned to Chicago’s downtown circuit. The Grant Park 150, set against the skyline of the Windy City and Lake Michigan, is entering its final year in 2025, and the future looks murky. As traditional speedways slip off the calendar with die-hard fans crying for a return and younger fans in awe of road courses, NASCAR is at a crossroads.

Enter Denny Hamlin, who lit up the media’s imaginations this weekend. Instead of mourning Chicago’s impending exit or vying for a return to the old 1.5-mile oval at Joliet, the#11 has a plan. Hamlin proposed a way that could let NASCAR hold on to the best of both worlds. It’s an idea so bizarre that it might just make sense.

Denny Hamlin’s unique plan

Before the streets of downtown Chicago ever echoed with the roar of Cup series engines, NASCAR fans in Illinois flocked to Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet. From 2001 to 2019, the 1.5-mile oval was a core part of the Cup calendar, hosting playoff races and thrilling finishes. But in the sports’ pivot to new markets and formats, Chicagoland was shelved, with no Cup Series races since 2019 and the track effectively mothballed.

But Denny Hamlin isn’t ready to leave either version of Chicago in the dust. In his pre-race media availability, the Joe Gibbs racing driver made a passionate case for keeping both tracks on schedule. But first, speaking on Grant Park’s future races, Hamlin has made his stance clear. He said in a press conference, “I mean, I personally would like to see them do everything they can to keep it here. I’d like to see the City rally behind this race. I could just tell you that non-racing fans at the hotel I’m staying at are talking about the race. And so, I think that it’s certainly got some sort of economic impact to the city itself. Here we are certainly exposing some new fans to this… Chicagoland is not a substitute for this race. I’d like to see us run both.” 

Chicago’s current street circuit has hospitality infrastructure baked in, and the city already knows how to host a race weekend. Why throw that away? If NASCAR can build a street race once, why not reshape it to better suit the product? Why abandon Chicago again when new fans have emerged and the old ones can be retained by keeping both tracks on the calendar? To Hamlin, downtown Chicago offers fan energy and economic impact that Joliet can’t match, but the oval racing experience would do the trick. That’s when he dropped his curveball idea: “You know, a wild thought is what about a street Oval?“

In his mind, you don’t need banking to stimulate the feel of oval racing. Just configure part of a street grid to feature long streets and four punchy corners. Take the best of road course rhythm and oval-style urgency, and put it where the fans already are, and he went on to explain how it could potentially work.

When asked by Jeff Gluck, Hamlin pointed to the current Chicago Street Course layout itself. Denny Hamlin explained, saying, “I mean, yeah, look at the layout of this track. If it’s just cut half of it off, you almost would have an Indy-type Oval there. It wouldn’t be an Oval, but it would be four corners, right? Yeah. Again, I don’t know if the race becomes that more compelling, but it’s certainly become less spread out. I’m just saying, surely you can find streets somewhere where you just kind of connect the four corners, and I get there’s so many different things. It’s just thought-provoking from my standpoint… All we need is acceleration, heavy braking points, and turns, and we’ll find a way to make a show out of that.” An interesting point to note here is that NASCAR already does the inverse of Hamlin’s proposal.

NASCAR has the Charlotte Roval, which is a road course oval, so a street oval shouldn’t be an alien idea. The Charlotte Roval, introduced in 2018 for the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, is a 2.28-mile track with 17 turns. Drivers race on the oval in turns one and two, cut into the infield for a series of tight corners, and then rejoin the oval between turns three and four to complete the lap.

The Roval was set to diversify the playoff schedule and give fans a more unpredictable road course challenge. It brings both elements of high-speed drafting and technical braking zones, leading to thrilling restarts and frequent drama. Surprisingly, Hamlin doesn’t like the Charlotte Roval at all! When asked on his Actions Detrimental podcast which track he would remove from the schedule if he had a choice, the #11 did not hesitate in mentioning the ROVAL, as he has just one top-10 finish in 7 races there. However, a street oval is a different equation altogether, and Hamlin is ready to embrace it.

In a sport constantly torn between innovation and tradition, Hamlin’s street oval proposal feels like a rare middle ground. It might sound crazy, but in NASCAR, crazy ideas sometimes make the best races.

Hamlin’s early Chicago heartbreak

Denny Hamlin didn’t even get to log a single lap before his Chicago weekend took a disastrous turn. Just minutes into Saturday’s NASCAR Cup Series practice at the Grant Park 165, the engine in his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota let go in dramatic fashion. Hamlin told truTV, saying, “I hadn’t even hit the gas yet. I came off turn 4, started accelerating, and blew the bottom out.” With no official lap recorded, the three-time race winner in 2025 will have to start Sunday’s race with zero on-track experience for the weekend.

The timing couldn’t be worse, especially on a technical 2.2-mile Street course where every lap of practice counts. Hamlin, a former pole-sitter at the inaugural Chicago event in 2023, entered the weekend with momentum from a strong mid-season run. Instead, he’ll roll off from the rear of the field, without the benefit of any setup feedback or track familiarity, an especially tough blow on a track known for its tight braking zones and blind corners.

Mechanical gremlins have become an unsettling theme for Toyota’s Cup series teams in recent months. The Joe Gibbs Racing #11 also suffered a blown engine in Texas in early May and experienced clutch issues the very next week in Kansas. More recently, his 23XI Racing drivers weren’t spared either; Bubba Wallace was hit with a starter failure at Pocono, and all three 23XI Racing Toyotas were plagued by brake issues during the race. The reliability concerns were mounting at a time when consistency is crucial, with the playoffs drawing closer.

Hamlin went on to say, “We want to be in control as drivers. We want to be in control of our results. (Chicago) is a racetrack where it’s important to have reps. We spend hours practicing and getting ready, and (we) couldn’t even make a pace lap before we blew up.” JGR has been dominant all season, and this setback was as deflating as it was unexpected. Once again, Hamlin finds himself racing not just the field, but the equipment underneath him.