After two strong years, Road America won't return to NASCAR's Cup schedule in 2023

After a two-year Fourth of July weekend pairing invigorated drivers and drew massive crowds to Road America, NASCAR won’t bring the Cup Series back to Wisconsin next season.

The rural Sheboygan County road course will be replaced by a temporary street circuit in downtown Chicago in 2023, a race announced Tuesday by city and NASCAR officials.

“We’ve had some great racing at Road America the past few years in the NASCAR Cup Series, much longer than that with the NASCAR Xfinity Series,” Ben Kennedy, NASCAR senior vice president of racing development and strategy, said in a Zoom news conference after the announcement.

“They’ve been great partners and we’ve seen a great turnout from the fan perspective as well. ... That said, it is unfortunate that we’re not going back in 2023, and just because it’s a no for 2023 doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a no forever.”

The Enjoy Illinois 300 is set be held on a 12-turn, 2.2-mile course, with the start/finish line and pit road located along South Columbus Drive directly in front of Buckingham Fountain. IMSA-sanctioned sports cars will join the Cup Series on the July 1-2 weekend, NASCAR said.

The thought of a Chicago street race arose late in 2019, about the same time as the idea of the L.A. Coliseum event, Kennedy said. Then serious work began about a year ago and details were ironed out over the past 90 days.

Kennedy cited the proximity of the two venues and concerns about oversaturation of road among the reasons to not have both Road America and Chicago on the Cup Series schedule.

Whether NASCAR’s second-level Xfinity Series returns to Road America has not been announced.

Road America became Wisconsin’s NASCAR home in 2010 after nonpayment for a race at the Milwaukee Mile caused the sanctioning body to pull out of the venerable speedway.

Throughout an 11-year run with the Xfinity Series as the headliner, Road America continued to seek a Cup race, having hosted NASCAR’s premier series once before, in 1956, the track’s second season. That Cup date finally came last year in place of the NASCAR-owned Chicagoland Speedway, a 1½-oval in Joliet, Illinois, that was shuttered after the 2019 season.

The 250-mile race was a co-promotion between NASCAR and the track, although specifics of the arrangement never became public. The Xfinity Series remained as an undercard.

Whether Xfinity returns to Road America, and the possibility the Camping World Truck Series would come along, may not be known for several months. It was September last year before the full 2022 schedules for all three national series were announced with Xfinity and trucks following Cup by two weeks.

The idea of a Chicago street race was first raised publicly last June when iRacing, the ultrarealistic racing simulation game, developed one based on actual roadways there. Then speculation heated up seriously in June, at which point Road America officials said they were hopeful NASCAR would decide to return.

Finally, a letter from the City of Chicago to NASCAR officials endorsing the idea of street-course races in 2023, 2024 and 2025 was reported by The Athletic sports news website after a public records request.

The Chicago street race is in keeping with NASCAR’s recent interest in shaking up the schedule, including with non-traditional venues.

The Los Angeles Coliseum hosted the season-opening exhibition race, and the St. Louis market also was added this season. Road America and Nashville Superspeedway joined the Cup schedule in 2021, when NASCAR also moved the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s race from the oval to the infield road course and one of Bristol’s races to a dirt surface.

“Of all the changes, this is our boldest change,”  Kennedy said during the announcement.

The first Chicago race coincides with NASCAR’s negotiating of a new television contract. The current deal with Fox and NBC, reportedly worth more than $8 billion, runs through 2024.

Road America officials do not release attendance figures but did characterize the 2021 crowd as the track’s largest in a long time if not ever. This year’s was comparable, track president and general manager Mike Kertscher said last weekend during Road America's vintage event, and the attention the Cup Series brought to the track has helped build its other events.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: NASCAR replacing Road America Cup race with Chicago street course