NASCAR drivers testing at Chicagoland in favor getting back to Road America

JOLIET, IL – NASCAR took another step toward completing its Chicagoland Speedway 360 with cars circling the track for the first time in seven years for two days of testing.

Two championship winning drivers said all the right things April 22 about their excitement in returning to a track that hosted a total of 33 races from 2001-19.

But Ryan Blaney and Kyle Larson would also be quick to raise their hands if the sanctioning body asked for volunteers to go back to their first interim stop, Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, 190 miles to the north.

NASCAR ran 19 Cup Series races at Chicagoland, and what is now the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series raced 24 times. But events scheduled for the 2020 season were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the NASCAR-owned facility has largely been dormant since.

NASCAR took the Cup Series to Road America in 2021 and ’22 to join what had been a standalone weekend for the second division for 11 seasons. Then at the conclusion of that agreement, both series left for the downtown Chicago street circuit.

Both divisions will race at Chicagoland in 2026 on the Fourth of July weekend.

Larson, the two-time and defending Cup Series champion from Hendrick Motorsports, and 2023 champ Blaney of Penske Racing spoke to reporters during a break on the second day of the Goodyear tire test.

When asked about Road America and their interest in returning, here’s what they said:

Kyle Larson

I remember when I would go there back in the Nationwide [now O’Reilly] days, I mean, fans were hanging from the trees watching, and when we went there with Cup, it was kind of the same thing.

I think freshness of the schedule is always good. Like this race, seeing the crowd in the stands just for yesterday’s practice was awesome. So I would imagine the crowd would be big for this first time back, and hopefully, we’ll continue to come back and we can put on a good show.

There’s only so many weeks in the year, so it’s hard to get to all the tracks.

Ryan Blaney

I love Road America personally. I was really excited when they put it on the schedule in ‘21 and ran it for a couple years. …  Then [it] went away, but the people up there are awesome. Huge race fans. That’s a gorgeous area. And they always have had multiple series out there, whether it’s the TA cars, us, a couple other things out there.

It’s just a fun weekend obviously, and that was a big racetrack for Menards and that whole family. So I would love to go back there. Mainly for the crowd.

I thought the people, they were really passionate about racing, and I know they were upset that we didn’t go back when we decided to do that. Yeah, that’s a place that I would love to revisit at some point.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Road America still intrigues NASCAR drivers Kyle Larson, Ryan Blaney