For all intents and purposes, Chicagoland Speedway is a new racetrack for this iteration of the NASCAR Cup Series and it’s very much an open question about how it will race on Sunday night.
It’s a new track, not because of how much it has aged since its last race weekend in 2019, but because the NextGen car is such a radically different platform compared to those that came before it.
Independent rear suspension
Wider low-profile tire
Sealed underbody
Rear diffuser
Chase Briscoe said ‘it is like learning a new race track,’ even though he competed on it for several years in the O’Reilly Series and Craftsman Truck Series.
“It has more grip than what we used to have,” Briscoe said. “It’s very odd. When I first got here, I thought it was going to be like Homestead or Darlington where you lose three and a half to four seconds over the course of a run and we haven’t had that yet.”
Typically, as surfaces age, tracks lose grip and Chicagoland was initially paved in 1999 prior to its opening in 2001. The track has sat dormant since that last race weekend in 2019.
“The racetrack is almost gaining grip sitting here, which is very odd to say,” Briscoe said. “The roughness is very similar to what it is was before but it is like going to a new racetrack with the NextGen in general.”
Tyler Reddick had the fastest long run car during practice on Friday but came away puzzled. He echoed what Briscoe said about how much grip the track seemed to have compared to his expectations.
“I guess I just walked away from practice scratching my head a bit,” Reddick said. “I thought there was going to be more fall off. The track has been dormant for a while but I just thought the tires would wear out more than what they did. I thought the track would get wider than it did, but there wasn’t a lot of fall off throughout practice.”
For what it’s worth, Reddick also thinks the track will eventually widen out on Sunday as drivers get desperate for clean air and clean off. He even thinks it could happen on Saturday during the O’Reilly Series race.
But there are also a lot of other attributes that make Chicagoland an impending adventure for the Cup Series roster. There are patches of new pavement and seams that must be traversed.
Most interestingly, there is a bump in Turn 1 and a ‘jump’ in Turn 3. The latter has been compared to the Turn 2 ‘ramp’ at Naval Base Coronado.
“I’ll need a good chiropractor on Monday,” Preece said.
But will it challenge drivers to race side-by-side on Sunday? ‘Maybe’ says pole sitter Denny Hamlin.
“Yeah, a little bit,” he said. “I mean, once you get past that one in Turn 1, it seems like it’s actually bigger the further up you go up the racetrack, but once you get past that, the corner is actually pretty relatively smooth.
“So, I wouldn’t suspect there’d be too much trouble with our cars, maybe the O’Reilly cars, just simply because of their (aerodynamic) platform. You probably have to be a little bit more careful being beside someone that hits a bump.
“The NextGen car, we’re able to run closer side-by-side and not lose control as much so I don’t think it’ll be a huge issue. In Turn 3 and 4, it’s going to be about the minute someone decides that they’re going to hold the guy on the bottom hard and low when they guy is trying to accelerate over the bump. That’s where you could see something happen.”
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