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CHICAGO (WLS) — Chicago’s third annual NASCAR Street Race will hit the gas later Sunday, charging full speed into a second day.
Fans will be back in and around Grant Park for this high-octane day of professional racing.
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The NASCAR Cup Series — Grant Park 165 — takes off Sunday afternoon with Chicago Bulls legend Derrick Rose as the grand marshal.
The Xfinity Series Race was the main event on Saturday and did they get just beautiful weather or what?
New Zealand’s Shane van Gisbergen took home the win. This is actually van Gisbergen’s second straight time finishing first here in Chicago.
RELATED: Street closures for Chicago NASCAR race underway, construction schedule shortened: officials
The 2.2 mile, 12 turn race track takes drivers through Grant Park and along DuSable Lakeshore Drive with the city skyline setting the stage for these unforgettable races.
Fans poured into Grant Park from across the city and around the country on Saturday.
One guy here who came all the way from Louisiana to watch the NASCAR Chicago Street Race for the very first time.
Some Chicago area locals shared with me more about how this race has become a family affair.
NASCAR fan Brian Stanley Sr. is from south suburban Flossmoor. He said he and his family have come out to the race for the last three years.
“We wait every year for this, we make the calendar. This year, we have seats on pit row,” Stanley said. “It’s here in Chicago. It’s here in Chicago and we get a chance to see it. We get a chance to relive it… When it comes here to Chicago, it’s such a wonderful thing because you feel really close to it.”
Stanley says there is nothing like hearing the roar of the engines reverberate throughout the city.
“It is really cool to see them on a road course race, really,” Stanley said. “It just sounds so loud and it is so fast.”
Festivities were in full force across NASCAR village, bringing in fans from different states and countries.
As NASCAR rips through Chicago’s Grant Park, a high-speed, an all-electric challenger has entered the race.
“There’s no engine in this car,” Chris Shigas with ABB said. “It has three electric motors in it and 1360 horsepower. That’s an impressive machine.”
NASCAR, along with electrical engineering company, ABB, Chevrolet and Ford, unveiled a first-of-its-kind electric vehicle showcase to fans at the Chicago Street Race.
The three supercharged prototypes taking on the track? A Ford Mustang Mach-E NASCAR EV, an ABB-NASCAR EV and a Chevy Blazer EV-R NASCAR prototype.
ABB’s Chris Shigas says the company is working closely with NASCAR to look at energy efficient solutions.
“We’re looking at NASCAR tracks across the nation and seeing how we can help them run more sustainably and energy efficient,” Shigas said.
“It felt pretty much like a normal race car with the weight and everything for the most part,” driver Rajah Caruth said.
Caruth spent time behind the wheel of the Chevy Blazer EV-R. Caruth says the EVs handle just a bit differently than the traditional gas-powered race cars, but when it comes to the acceleration.
“It’s literally like Mario Kart, getting the star or bullet boost, putting a rocket on top of the wing. That’s how I would describe it,” he said.
The screech of these high-powered EVs reverberates throughout the park, taking on tight turns and open straightaways with the picturesque Chicago skyline setting the stage.
I even had the chance to wave the checkered flag at the end of the run…something I never knew I needed to do until now!
“This is two years in the process just from getting the car on the track to where we are today,” NASCAR engineer CJ Tobin said.
“We’re excited about the technology,” Tobin said. “We want to see what we can do as an organization with a different powertrain…We want to be in the driver’s seat knowing where we’re going, not in the passenger seat looking back like where are we now?”
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