NASCAR's Cup Series races at Chicagoland Speedway on Sunday for the first time in seven years. The eero 400, the 19th of 36 points races on the 2026 schedule, is set for 6 p.m. ET on TNT at the 1.5-mile oval in Joliet, Illinois, which last held a Cup race on June 30, 2019.
That gap runs to 2,562 days. Alex Bowman won the 2019 race for his first career Cup victory, and the track has not held a Cup event since. Chicagoland takes the 2026 date from the Chicago Street Race, the downtown course that ran the previous three summers; the street race is scheduled to return in 2027. Sunday is the 20th Cup race at the oval.
The weekend
The race caps a three-day schedule over the holiday weekend. Friday, July 3 brings an ARCA Menards Series 100-lapper at 8 p.m. on FS1 and Cup practice at 6 p.m. on TruTV. Saturday, July 4 has Cup qualifying at 3 p.m. on TruTV and the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series Cuervo 300 at 5:30 p.m. on the CW. Sunday's eero 400 runs 267 laps and 400.5 miles, with stage breaks at laps 80 and 165. Radio coverage is on MRN and SiriusXM 90. The purse is $11,233,037.
The points
The eero 400 is one of the regular season's final eight races before the playoff field is set, and it lands in the middle of a points race that has swung hard. Denny Hamlin arrives one point ahead of Tyler Reddick, having erased a 129-point deficit over the last six races and outscored Reddick in each of them. NASCAR's statistical advance puts Hamlin's chance of winning the regular-season championship at 63 percent, up from 11 percent. He has led 824 laps this season, a career high through 18 races, and has finished top-five in each of his last six starts on 1.5-mile tracks. Hamlin also won at Chicagoland in 2015, one of three drivers in Sunday's field with a Cup win at the track. The others are Brad Keselowski, who won in 2012 and 2014, and Bowman.
Kyle Larson has the best average finish at Chicagoland of any active driver, 6.17 over six starts, though all six came before he joined Hendrick Motorsports. He also brings a 42-race winless streak, the longest of his Hendrick tenure, with top-five finishes in each of his last four starts.
Milestones
Two milestone starts are on Sunday's board. Carson Hocevar makes his 100th Cup start; only five drivers have won their 100th, most recently Erik Jones at Darlington in 2019. Ty Dillon makes his 300th.
The race is also the second round of NASCAR's In-Season Challenge, the 32-driver single-elimination bracket that pays $1 million and runs five weeks, from Sonoma to the finale at Indianapolis on July 26.
Off the track, the weekend doubles as a Chicago stop for NASCAR's collaboration with the Rolling Stones. Timed to the July 10 release of the band's album Foreign Tongues, the promotion sets up a branded listening car at the Chicagoland Speedway Fan Zone and other spots around the city, built on the premise that a Cup season and a rock tour are the same traveling show. The Charlotte Mercury covered the collaboration when it was announced in June.
The green flag is scheduled for 6 p.m. Eastern. Chicagoland has waited 2,562 days for it.