The 2025 Chicago Street Race was a thriller, but not for all the right reasons. Shane van Gisbergen owned the day, sweeping the Grant Park 165 from the pole for his third career Cup win and second of the season, cementing his status as the winningest foreign-born driver. Michael McDowell led early, snagging Stage 1 and holding the point for 31 laps until a throttle cable failure knocked him out of contention.
A Lap 4 pile-up sparked by Carson Hocevar’s spin between Turns 10 and 11 took out heavyweights like Brad Keselowski, Austin Dillon, Daniel Suárez, and Will Brown, setting a chaotic tone. But it was the final laps that had everyone talking, and not in a good way. With two laps left, Cody Ware’s brake rotor blew, sending his No. 51 Mustang head-on into the Turn 6 tire barrier at 93 mph.
NASCAR’s hesitation to throw a caution until after SVG crossed the start-finish line for the final lap sparked outrage. Fans expected a quick yellow flag, especially with Ware stuck and calling for help. Instead, the delay, nearly 35 seconds, let the race end under caution, handing SVG the win. Brad Moran, NASCAR Cup Series managing director, stepped up Tuesday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio to explain the blunder, but his words only fanned the flames.
“We didn’t have the actual footage of the impact of the car getting into the tire barrier. That’s something we’re going to take back and we’re going to look at if we go back to Chicago and we’ll be looking at certain areas of that racetrack and definitely improving that situation…,” Moran said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “However, if we would have had the shot of Cody’s impact there, the caution would have come out immediately. But it was thrown immediately when he dropped his window net. We give them the opportunity to pull out, but if we would have had that first shot, we would have known that car wasn’t pulling out. So, that’s on us. We’re going to review it and we’re going to look at it. If we go back to Chicago, we’ll definitely have a different plan.”
The delay, only resolved when Ware dropped his window net, raised serious questions about NASCAR’s officiating on street courses. Fans didn’t hold back, tearing into the explanation on Reddit and calling it a weak dodge that sidestepped accountability.
Fan reactions to NASCAR’s Chicago fumble
Fans were brutal, and they had every reason to be. One Redditor scoffed, “We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong [closes ticket].” Moran’s promise to “go back, we’re going to review it” felt like a brush-off, with no real admission of fault or concrete fixes laid out. His claim that they lacked footage of Ware’s crash rang hollow, especially when another fan pointed out, “‘Unfortunately, we didn’t have the actual footage of the impact of the car getting into the tire barrier. Yes you did, it was the onboard cam sponsored by Arby’s.”
Ware’s No. 51 Mustang had multiple camera feeds, roof, rear bumper, cabin, and 360° part of NASCAR’s Arby’s-backed package. Fans argued officials either missed or ignored these views, a costly oversight for a billion-dollar sport.
Another fan pitched a fix, “Implement a virtual pace car on road courses only and you can throw this caution without worrying about a chaotic and unfair end to the race… Surely towing the car away wouldn’t have taken more than 2 or 3 laps of caution.” Virtual cautions, used in series like IMSA, could’ve neutralized the field, cleared Ware’s car in a couple of laps, and kept the race green for a fair finish. Instead, NASCAR’s delay avoided a messy restart but left safety in the lurch.
Denny Hamlin echoed the suspicion, “Regardless of what they tell you … rain coming in, possibility of lightning … all that played into a factor, in my opinion,” suggesting officials let SVG take the white flag to dodge a weather-induced mess. Echoing a similar emotion, one fan fumed, “It’s obvious they waited for SVG to get to the white to avoid having to deal with the weather… They sacrificed potential immediate medical attention to Cody Ware.”
The outrage peaked with, “Inexcusable a billion dollar org should have a camera feed available for every cranny of a track it’s not 1980 cameras are cheap.” Fans recalled a 2024 Daytona Truck race where a flipped truck went unnoticed for two laps, pointing to a pattern of blind spots. For a high-budget sport, missing key footage on Chicago’s complex street course was a shocking miss. Fans aren’t just mad, they’re demanding better camera coverage and faster calls to keep safety first, especially as street races like Chicago test NASCAR’s limits.
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