Blackhawks legend Chris Chelios is serving as one of the grand marshals for the Chicago Street Race, along with former Bears running back Matt Forte.
Chelios is admittedly not the fastest driver, but did he have a friend who loved the exhilaration of going top speed: Bulls legend Michael Jordan.
“I’ll never forget the days MJ in the 90s was starting to get into his Ferrari kick and would take me down Madison Avenue at 120 miles an hour,” Chelios said.
Jordan picked up Chelios at a bar on Madison Street at night, and it didn’t take long for Jordan to get to 120 mph.
“Luckily, there was no traffic,” Chelios said. “It didn’t take long for him to get to 120. Trust me.”
Thought he knows little about NASCAR, Chelios is excited for the atmosphere.
“I just can’t wait to see the race start and there’s a lot of energy,” Chelios said. “It’s a different crowd and something I’m not familiar with.”
van Gisbergen’s right-foot brake
Drivers always seem in awe of how Shane van Gisbergen uses his right foot to brake.
“He’s gonna be a tough one to beat,” driver Ryan Blaney said. “It’s nice that we all have kind of a street race under our belt.
“I think he’s like the only guy probably right now that right foot brace anymore. I would have to dedicate three to five years of my life redfoot braking, to like get up to even half of what he can do.”
van Gisbergen is used to Supercars racing, where the left foot is used to change gears and right foot to break. It’s the opposite for NASCAR drivers.
Pressure on Wallace?
Bubba Wallace feels some pressure, not just because he’s currently 15th in the NASCAR standings, but because McDonalds, one of his key sponsors, is headquartered in Chicago. Oh, and Michael Jordan is the co-owner of Wallace’s 23XI racing company. Add all of that together, and all eyes will be fixated on Wallace, who earned a seventh-place finish at Nashville Superspeedway.
“Hopefully, we’re one of those cars you can’t count out,” Wallace said. “We haven’t had the best stretch of races in a while. It was a nice finish and rebound last Sunday in Nashville, but not how we want our race to play out. We definitely want to do better in the middle and middle portion, but now, we just have to keep after it. We’re all still hungry.”
Wallace is as close to a must-win situation as the driver can be.
“I’m quite tired of having to do it on points,” Wallace said. “[We] always seem to find ourselves right around the bubble, and it gets stressful. Every race it goes by you don’t want to gets more and more stressful.
“It’d be nice just to plan and then you can start going crazy just to try something in the regular season.”