Sweet Home Chicago

Throughout any given year, there are a handful of standout NASCAR events that are treated like tentpoles on which the rest of the season is built around. This includes the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, NASCAR Championship Weekend at Phoenix Raceway, and most notably, the Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway. For the last two years, a new event has emerged and differentiated itself from the others, and that is the Chicago Street Race held on the city’s downtown streets.

If you read the blog that I wrote about this event last year (High Speed Life Lessons), you might remember how difficult it was to produce. In addition to being the first street course to host our premier division (the NASCAR Cup Series), we also were forced to deal with one of the largest rainstorms recorded to hit the area. The National Weather Service reported 3.35” of rain that struggled to evacuate the course, which became a significant variable for this event producer to contend with throughout the race weekend.

This year, we had the opportunity to redeem ourselves. Even though we faced rain Sunday afternoon, I am happy to report that we were able to get all our fan-facing entertainment elements in before the weather delayed the race and gave our competition teammates a headache to manage.

One of the mistakes that I made last year was gathering a comprehensive event team too late in the game, and waiting for a magical moment to appear where I could present them with a detailed plan to execute. Learning from that error in planning, we assembled a deployment team more than six months ahead of the event to start preparing for redemption. Now that we had the right people in the right places, I focused on three key areas where I thought I could contribute in a meaningful way.

1 – Driver Introduction Floats

On any given NASCAR race weekend, the drivers typically exit the introduction stage and get into the back of a pickup truck where they are paraded around the track so everyone can see them. There are numerous reasons why these driver introduction vehicles create a tremendous amount of work and anxiety, including supply chain issues, weather impact, logistics, and more.

I spent time brainstorming an alternative that provides a similar experience for our guests but does so in a more controllable way. After months of planning, our fabrication partners at Nineyards and HMS built three specialty vehicles designed to safely transport our athletes around the track so everyone on property can see them. These vehicles worked perfectly and provided guests around the 2.2-mile, 12-turn course with a unique look at every athlete competing throughout the weekend regardless of where they were watching the race from. I am excited to continue to test these vehicles this year and use them exclusively throughout the 2025 season and beyond.

2 – Chicago Street Race Driver Reveal

For the last two years, I have wanted to change how our drivers are presented to the audience. I wanted to have more time, budget, and autonomy to showcase the athletes in a way that made these stars shine brighter. I got that chance on Saturday night when each of the drivers competing the next day agreed to come to our largest stage and be introduced in a unique way. It was our job to make the most out of this opportunity.

The show started with an eight-minute performance by the Pack Drumline, The Chicago Luvabulls, and Chicago dance group Puzzle Box, which helped set the stage and the tone for the evening. It was followed by each and every NASCAR Cup Series Driver walking up a custom-built staircase under the stage and being revealed to the live audience.

We strategically picked moments to highlight drivers’ personalities. NASCAR star Bubba Wallace came on stage with a pair of drum sticks in his hand and played the Drumline’s kit, which was reminiscent of a scene from the movie Drumline, and 2023 NASCAR Cup Series Champion Ryan Blaney was led on stage by musicians playing the Rocky theme song and a music sample from Jadakiss singing “The Champ Is Here.” We introduced drivers in order of race wins, saving our reigning 2023 race winner for last. Shane Van Gisbergen paused at the edge of the stage flanked by Monster girls to soak in the moment.

This 45-minute driver reveal was one of the proudest moments of my career, where I knew we had done something never seen before at a NASCAR event, and something that I hope sets the standard for all large motorsports events in the future.

3 – Chicago-Centric Entertainment Elements

The mission from our internal customer was to deliver a show that had a big event feel while highlighting the city of Chicago. There are very easy, surface-level ways to do this like singing “Sweet Home Chicago” and building a stage that looks like the Chicago Theater, but we wanted to go deeper with more authenticity.

One of the ways that we achieved this was by hiring Fourline Creative, a local creative firm that was founded in Chicago. The Fourline team is authentically Chicago, working with artists like Chance the Rapper and Jennifer Hudson, as well as sports teams like the Chicago Bulls. With the help of Fourline and our production partners at Wasserman Live, the collective dropped Chicago easter eggs all over the event.

We had Chicago’s original voice of the National Anthem Wayne Messmer, along with more than 30 amazing performers from Uniting Voices Chicago, sing one of the most beautiful renditions of “America the Beautiful” I have ever heard. There were also performances from Chicago locals the Pack Drumline and the Chicago Luvabulls, all introduced by the amazingly talented public address announcer Gene Honda. Honda has been with the Chicago White Sox since 1985 and is known to many as the voice of Chicago Sports. What I loved most about these elements is that all of them fit authentically into a NASCAR event without feeling like we were pandering or losing what makes a NASCAR event special.

Big events like this are a curse and a blessing. The curse is that my body was smoked after logging more than 30k steps a day for most of the week, but the blessing was seeing the pride in my teammates’ eyes knowing that we had produced an event unlike any before, and they had successfully set a new high standard that we aspire to beat next year.

There are way too many performers, production partners, and teammates to thank individually, but you know who you are, and I appreciate each and every one of you!

Until next year.

Cheers,

Michael