NASCAR is leaving Chicago in 2026 as it moves its annual race from Millennium Park back to Chicagoland Speedway, where it last raced in 2019.
The 1.5-mile oval is about an hour’s drive from the Loop in the city of of Joliet, but there used to be an oval racing track much closer to The Windy City.
The Chicago Motor Speedway was a short-lived one-mile oval in Cicero that has an interesting story. It’s no longer there, but its history has been preserved in Google Earth.
1999
The track was built on the grounds of the Sportsman’s Park horse racing track, which was adjacent to the similarly sized Hawthorne Race Course. Sportsman’s Park originally opened as a dog racing track in the 1920s and was reputed to be a favorite haunt of Al Capone’s, before it shifted to horse racing…