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It was 74 years and two weeks ago when NASCAR ran the first race of its Strictly Stock division, what we now know as the Cup Series. In the years since, over 2,696 races, those stock cars have rumbled around ovals of dirt, asphalt and concrete, over road courses, through an Atlantic ocean spray, between sand dunes, and even inside ballparks, football stadiums and across an airport tarmac in New Jersey.
This weekend, though, those machines and the drivers within them will navigate a raceway unlike anywhere or anyone before them. They will steer their way through the Loop Community of Chicago, the first true street course ever run by the world’s preeminent stock car series.
These cars weren’t built for this. Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive weren’t built for them. The racers seem to be worried about the course’s raciness and the cockpit heat produced by the special mufflers that will be affixed to the exhaust systems that will be on their cars for this race. Why? Because of the complaints from a not small number of Chicagoans who like to spend their Independence Day weekend hanging out Grant Park, a little irritated about 800-horsepower machines running red lights and shaking walls all weekend, especially the walls of museums covered in fine art.
So, a question: Why even do this?
OK, an answer. And it comes from a man who knows a little something about turning left and right in a high-end racing machine on the same streets where regular folks do the same in city buses and minivans.
“Why not?” says Jenson Button, the former F1 superstar who made 16 starts in the Monaco Grand Prix, including a win during his 2009 world championship season. He’ll be making his second Cup Series…
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