NASCAR revs up for big weekend at Chicagoland Speedway

For 51 weeks a year, Steve Borkan is a high-profile Chicago attorney.

But for one week each year, the Skokie resident transforms into one of the Chicago area's biggest NASCAR fans during the sport's marquee event, the start of the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup championship at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet.

"I tell my friends and family in advance I am unavailable for anything other than the Chase weekend," said Borkan, a NASCAR fan since 1977. "When I know the race is coming to Chicagoland, I can hardly keep a thought in my head. I am beyond stoked."

The three NASCAR races Friday through Sunday are part of one of the Chicago area's biggest sports weekends of the year. The Bears host Arizona on Sunday, the Cubs host the Cardinals all weekend, the ITU World Triathlon Grand Final runs through Saturday, the Blackhawks open training camp at Notre Dame and the PGA's BMW Championship runs through Sunday at Conway Farms Golf Club in Lake Forest.

Borkan has been coming to the NASCAR races since the Joliet track opened in 2001.

"Each time I go, I feel like I'm visiting family," Borkan said. "NASCAR is easy to follow, even for the casual fan. … There's so much more to the sport than simply cars going around in a circle."

NASCAR's Sprint Cup Series has raced at the 1.5-mile course since it opened. As the track surface matured over the years, the track became one of the sport's premier facilities.

That, coupled with Chicago being the sport's second-largest market behind Los Angeles, prompted NASCAR officials to move the Chase kickoff race to CLS in 2011.

"It's big any time you can welcome NASCAR to your venue and market," Chicagoland Speedway President Scott Paddock said. "But when we're tapped for now the fifth year to host the kickoff of the Chase, the start of the playoffs for one of the most watched and followed sports in America, that is a huge honor.

"This is the one time a year that the best stock car drivers come to our backyard. So by definition, this event will have a bigness to it, a scale, a pageantry to it that you're not going to get at a regular season game for a stick-and-ball sport. It's going to have a festival type atmosphere."

Drivers love the place, particularly Midwest natives, who have taken the checkered flag here in each of the last four Chase openers: Indiana's Tony Stewart (2011), Wisconsin's Matt Kenseth (2013) and Michigan's Brad Keselowski (2012, 2014).

Not only do the Northwest and Western suburbs make up a big portion of CLS's fan base, the thousands of fans, team members and media that travel from near and far have been a big boon to the Chicago area, with more than $200 million in economic impact, Paddock said.

NASCAR essentially takes over Chicago and the Speedway for nearly an entire week with several fan events, as well as industry meetings.

"It used to be where things would start Thursday or Friday," Paddock said. "But now it's almost a weeklong event, it's much more with all the corporate and TV partners coming in, industry officials and stakeholders and even fans, they're staying in our hotels, eating in our restaurants and patronizing our tourist attractions.

"We'll get fans from all 50 states this weekend, and I think the industry has really enjoyed making Chicago its destination for this week's kickoff."

One of the big preludes to the weekend was Thursday's annual free "Chase Fest" for fans in Chicago, which featured autograph sessions with all 16 Chase drivers and a concert by Grammy-nominated rockers 3 Doors Down.

But starting Friday, it's all racing with the Camping World Truck Series race, Saturday's Xfinity Series race and Sunday's main event, the MyAFibRisk.com 400 Sprint Cup race.

If both Sunday's weather and walk-up traffic on race day is good, Paddock hopes to fill the track's 65,000 seats, which would mark its first sellout since 2007.

As for Borkan, he'll be in Joliet first thing Friday morning, cheering on "my driver," six-time Sprint Cup champ Jimmie Johnson. Even though he takes good-natured ribbing about his passion for NASCAR, Borkan wouldn't have it any other way.

"My father and three brothers sort of look at me as the odd man out or sort of the black sheep," he said. "My father says when I talk so passionately about NASCAR, he wants to know what happened, where his actual son is and how it is I got switched at birth."

NASCAR's big weekend at Chicagoland Speedway

<b>Sprint Cup Series </b>Race: MyAFibRisk.com 400 at 2 p.m.Sunday (NBCSN)

Distance: 400.5 miles (267 laps)

Fast facts: The 10-race, four-knockout round Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs starts here. … Jimmie Johnson enters the Chase as the No. 1 seed and owns the most Chase victories with 25. … Brad Keselowski has a nine-race top-10 streak, the longest in the NSCS. … Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin and Carl Edwards attempt to win the organization's ninth race in the last 12 events. … Kevin Harvick begins his NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship defense at Chicagoland. … Jeff Gordon ties Ricky Rudd for the all-time consecutive starts record (788) by beginning Sunday's race. … Jamie McMurray and Paul Menard make their Chase debuts.

<b>XFINITY Series</b>Race: Furious 7 300 at 5 p.m. Saturday (NBCSN)

Distance: 300 miles (200 laps)

Fast facts: Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Daniel Suarez, Matt Kenseth and Kyle Busch try for the season series sweep of Chicagoland after Erik Jones won there in June. … Chris Buescher attempts to build on his 21-point series standings lead over Chase Elliott. … Suarez continues to battle with Darrell Wallace for the XFINITY Series Sunoco Rookie of the Year Award. Suarez leads Wallace by 30 points. … "Furious 7" star Chris "Ludacris" Bridges is the grand marshal of Saturday night's race.

<b>Camping World Truck Series</b>Race: American Ethanol E15 225 at 7:30 p.m. Friday (FS1)

Distance: 225 miles (150 laps)

Fast facts: A new winner is guaranteed at Chicagoland as no driver in the field has won at the 1.5-mile track. … Timothy Peters makes his 200th career series start. … NASCAR Sprint Cup Series regular Kyle Larson will pilot the JR Motorsports No. 00 truck.

Tickets: For more information or to buy tickets, visit ChicagolandSpeedway.com or call 1-888-629-RACE (7223).

Source: NASCAR Wire Service