On July 6th, the sport made its return to the Chicagoland Speedway after seven long years. However, one major talking point before the race even began was the flooded parking lots due to the rain, which caused the Speedway to announce revised plans for parking just hours before the race, causing chaos at the track. Denny Hamlin weighed in on the venue's shortcomings. 

The No.11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver addressed this issue while recapping the race on his podcast, Actions Detrimental, on July 7. He referenced the 1989 film, Field of Dreams, while addressing the parking lot issue. 

"I guess I saw an aerial of someone in the stands, and there's h*** of a line coming in," he said. "Looked like Field of Dreams. They're coming into the racetrack. The cars are in the race, you know, we're getting ready to go green. I think it has long-term effects, right? It ain't going to hurt you now. It's going to hurt you later."

The picture Hamlin was referencing was posted by NASCAR reporter Jeff Gluck on his X account. Many of the fans complained that they were stuck in the parking lots for nearly three hours and missed out on Stage One of the race. 

The No. 11 driver further spoke about how the track itself was good, but fell short when it came to the fan experience aspect.

"I'm more into what fans nowadays, especially sports fans, expect a lot when it comes to what's the experience," Hamlin added. "That's parking, that's traffic, that's all the above, right?"

He pointed out that NASCAR needs to fix these issues before they return to the track for future races.

Although NASCAR’s comeback to the track was viewed as a successful one, Hamlin stressed that the sanctioning body needs to take a look at the infrastructure issues, which can be a huge deal when it comes to fan experience. 

He also came up with ways to fix it.

Denny Hamlin offers suggestions to improve the fan experience at Chicagoland

While he raised questions about the infrastructural shortcomings,  the three-time Daytona 500 winner offered a solution to improve the fan experience at the 1.5-mile tri-oval.

In the aforementioned podcast, Hamlin gave Ben Kennedy, the COO of NASCAR, and his team a suggestion of adding shuttles to bring the fans to the track from the parking lot instead of them walking it out.  

"I'm sure Ben and his team are looking at all the things that they obviously could improve week in week out, but spend in fan experience and spend in infrastructure to get them in there and the parking and make it quick and not have 12-person shuttles from the parking lot," Hamlin said. "You got to have 50-person shuttles and like just all those things."

As found on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway official site, they have already arranged shuttle services for fans for their race scheduled on October 4.

As of now, NASCAR has yet to comment on the situation. Only time will tell if they will take up on Denny Hamlin’s suggestion for the future. 

What do you think of the infrastructure problems at Chicagoland Speedway? Let us know in the comments.

Read more at Daytona Racing Digest.

Written by

Chionia Libania Colaco

Edited by

Soheli Tarafdar