NASCAR COO Steve O’Donnell is not commenting on whether 2025 will be the last year of the Chicago street race, or whether the series will eventually compete in Saudi Arabia, but he does maintain that domestic and foreign interest in the sport is significant.
Next year will mark the final year of NASCAR’s original three-year deal with the city of Chicago to hold the street race. Asked about a possible extension, O’Donnell said: “For us, we’re just looking at 2025. It’ll be the third year of a three-year run and each year we’ve wanted to build upon the momentum that we have. We’ve learned things each and every year — it’s our first street race, a lot of learnings came from that. A lot of weather challenges as well. … We’ve made some tweaks to the event format and continuing to evolve that as well, so we’ll get through the event, see where things are, but concentrating on 2025 and making that event as successful as it can be.”