
Indianapolis 500 winner Alex Palou: I'd 'absolutely' race NASCAR road course
Now, outside of racing for the remainder of the INDYCAR schedule, will Palou dip his toes in other racing waters? He recently cast doubt on competing in Formula 1. But what about a NASCAR race?
"Absolutely," Palou told host Kevin Harvick about whether he'd be interested in ever dabbling in a NASCAR road or street course on the latest edition of "Kevin Harvick's Happy Hour" on Fox Sports.
"I'd be down for that. It's a very different car. It's a very different kind of racing. I know I would get smashed by all of you guys on ovals, but I would love to give it a try at a road or a street course."
There are five remaining road/street courses on the 2025 NASCAR schedule: Viva Mexico 250 (June 15), Chicago Street Course (July 6), Toyota/Save Mart 350 (July 13), Go Bowling at The Glen (Aug. 10) and Bank of America ROVAL 400 (Oct. 5)
On the F1 front, Palou was previously part of the sport when he signed with McLaren's Testing of Previous Cars program in 2022, but he never competed in a race.
Since winning the Indianapolis 500, Palou has been making the rounds, which began with him appearing at the Indiana Pacers' Game 3 Eastern Conference Finals matchup against the New York Knicks. Then, he went to New York City to celebrate his 500 victory, and threw out the first pitch at the New York Mets game against the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday.
As for how the race played out, Palou, who started in sixth place, took the lead from Marcus Ericsson with 14 laps to go, and led the rest of the way. It was the first Indianapolis 500 win of Palou's career.
Palou will shoot to make it six wins in seven tries this season on Sunday in the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix (12:30 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app).
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USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Joey Chestnut revs up for Indy 500 of competitive eating: Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest
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New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
The big divide: How the SEC and Big Ten differ in dealing with the media
The Sandestin, Fla., Hilton is part hotel complex, part beach resort. Every year after Memorial Day, the SEC meets there to discuss league and national matters. Media members are also there, so it amounts to a week of publicity for the conference. This year, as the debate raged over the future of the College Football Playoff, the result was a lot of thinking out loud. Head coaches and athletic directors mused about different options. Commissioner Greg Sankey held a daily news conference, and at his final one, media members were handed an eight-page argument for why the SEC was the toughest football conference. Advertisement Whether you liked the SEC's message or not, it got out. Meanwhile, the other major conference was silent. The Big Ten quietly held its meetings the week before in Los Angeles, purposefully keeping the media at arm's length. Commissioner Tony Petitti, privately pushing for an automatic-bid CFP format, went months without publicly advocating for it. He finally relented on June 30, speaking on a podcast with Joel Klatt, a Fox Sports analyst who calls Big Ten games. "We're not asking to be handed anything. We want to play tough play-in games and create incentive for our schools to play more non-conference." More from @bigten Commissioner Tony Petitti on this CFP model. — The Joel Klatt Show: A CFB Pod (@JoelKlattShow) July 1, 2025 Normally, this would just be a media story, relatively unimportant in the grand scheme. But in this case, it seems to matter: The SEC and Big Ten were supposed to be working together on a format, but the public thinking by the SEC — and the silence from the Big Ten and Petitti — showed a fissure. As one Big Ten athletic director told The Athletic right after SEC meetings: 'We thought we were on the same page. What was that?' That was the SEC emerging as the key decision-maker, while the Big Ten publicly abdicated its preferred format of four automatic bids for itself and the SEC. And in the void left by the Big Ten, the ACC and Big 12 pushed for their preferred format (five conference champions plus 11 at-larges), with the SEC using its week-long platform to talk about schedule strength. Ohio State AD Ross Bjork, who spent more than a decade at Ole Miss and Texas A&M, put it another way: 'Look, I've been in that league. I know the media craze during that week. It's hard to avoid media at the SEC meetings. I totally get it, but that's the part. We just need to all get in a room and figure this out.' Advertisement They may still end up doing that. But the two conferences operate in very different ways when it comes to the media, as will be shown again in the coming weeks. The SEC will hold its football media days in Atlanta starting Monday, July 14, and running through Thursday of that week. Every conference now makes a big deal of its preseason media kick-off event, but the SEC makes the biggest. That has been the case through the years, ratcheting up under commissioner Mike Slive during his tenure from 2002 to 2015. 'We thought media days was an opportunity to showcase the teams and the schools,' said Charles Bloom, who was the SEC's communications dir ector under Slive. 'It was a week we were able to showcase the league.' But it wasn't just that week. Sankey, like Slive before him, has generally been the most accessible commissioner to the media. Bloom said the league 'has had a strong philosophy of cooperation with the media,' and painted it in a historical perspective. There were very few pro sports teams in the SEC footprint, so in many Southern markets, the teams were the only game in town. Even as more pro teams sprouted up in the region, and the conference expanded, the basic media philosophy has not changed. 'I use a term that Mike Slive used a lot: We were the holders of a sacred trust,' said Bloom, who now works at the University of South Carolina. 'I think what he meant was the league became so identifiable with the region. The roots of the history of the schools and the sports and the conference with the media and the markets and the fan base, that was it. … The ties were strong between the fans and the media and the programs.' The Big Ten operates in a different manner, but it wasn't always as insular as it is now. In 1971, Big Ten commissioner Wayne Duke began an annual luncheon at its football media days event in downtown Chicago. Every year, fans packed the luncheon to capacity, with coaches giving elevator pitches on their team and a player providing a keynote address. Many of the speeches were memorable, particularly in 2011 with Michigan State quarterback Kirk Cousins and in 2019 when now eight-time cancer survivor Casey O'Brien of Minnesota shared his life story at the Hilton Chicago. Under Duke and his successor, Jim Delany, the luncheon was the signature event at Big Ten media days. The ever-expanding league juggled its media interview sessions to keep the luncheon intact. That changed under former commissioner Kevin Warren, who moved football media days to Indianapolis in 2021 following the COVID-19 pandemic. The luncheon has not returned under Petitti, and Big Ten media days has relocated to Las Vegas and will be held July 22-24. Advertisement 'When I think about the luncheon, it absolutely served the purpose for many, many years, and many, many decades,' Big Ten chief operating officer Kerry Kenny said previously when explaining the move from Chicago to Indianapolis. 'I think fans probably get more insight now than they ever could have dreamed of when they were attending that luncheon. That was about the only time they would hear some of these other coaches from the other schools speak before the season started. So it's been an interesting switch from that nostalgic piece of Big Ten tradition.' Through spokeswoman Diane Dietz, the Big Ten office declined to comment for this story. The buttoned-up league has become more guarded in recent years. Delany, who retired in 2020, was not as accessible as his SEC counterparts, but he was responsive to issues impacting the Big Ten and collegiate athletics. Warren, who left the Big Ten for the Chicago Bears in 2023, was always available. Petitti, conversely, prefers to keep a low public profile and work for his league outside of the spotlight. However, that low-key philosophy has ceded the public narrative to the SEC, which has happily filled that power vacuum. The SEC office also declined to comment, not wanting to ruffle its Big Ten partners. Otherwise, though, the SEC's aggressive stance has seemed to work. People may not have liked Sankey politicking for his conference before the final CFP selection in 2023, but ultimately, Sankey's team (Alabama) got in over Florida State, while ACC commissioner Jim Phillips remained silent. Sankey has also regularly appeared on the SEC Network and its flagship program, the 'Paul Finebaum Show,' to push for his team's and the conference's agenda. Sankey has talked before about being willing to take the slings and arrows as a condition of the job. Such as when the SEC added Oklahoma and Texas, a move vilified by most outside the conference, but fully endorsed by the presidents and chancellors of Sankey's conference. 'There's probably plenty of things to blame me for. We work in a dynamic environment, where people are going to make decisions. They always have,' Sankey told The Athletic in October 2021, a few months after adding Oklahoma and Texas. 'If there's a desire for someone to be a lightning rod, I understand that.' When Petitti finally appeared on Klatt's show, it seemed an acknowledgment that he was trying to get the narrative back. Perhaps his silence was a product of not being familiar enough with the college media landscape. 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Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
NASCAR Chicago Street Race puts city back on national TV stage
The annual NASCAR Chicago Street Race is upon us, and the forecast calls for a 50% chance of thunderstorms and 100% chance of flooding the airwaves with shots of The Bean, the beach, skyscrapers and deep-dish pizza. But as the street race enters its third and possibly final run through Grant Park this July Fourth weekend, it may be time to take stock of a hard to quantify but potentially invaluable benefit: a seemingly endless loop through the Loop on national TV. Beyond tens of thousands of expected attendees, Chicago's telegenic lakefront and skyline will once again serve as a live backdrop to race cars careening around an urban circuit for millions of viewers during the better part of Saturday and Sunday afternoon, creating one giant commercial for the city. By the end of the weekend, tiny Balbo Drive, which is at the center of the pop-up street course, may be as famous as Mr. Beef, the setting for the hit TV series 'The Bear.' 'When the NASCAR event goes well, and hopefully the weather will hold up, it gives the city a huge amount of attention, and that is very, very hard to replace,' said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. 'The city doesn't have enough money to ever spend on advertising to generate that type of reach.' Chicago is set to host the street race on a 12-turn, 2.2-mile course through Grant Park, down DuSable Lake Shore Drive and up Michigan Avenue. The Xfinity Series Loop 110, which features mostly younger up-and-coming NASCAR drivers, will be broadcast Saturday at 3:30 p.m. on the CW Network and local affiliate WGN-TV. The Grant Park 165 Cup Series race will air Sunday at 1 p.m. on cable channel TNT. While the street race navigated everything from Canadian wildfire haze to record rainfall during its first two years, it proved to be a very successful TV event for previous host network NBC. In 2023, the inaugural Cup Series street race averaged nearly 4.8 million viewers despite a torrential rain delay. Last year, the Grant Park 165, broken up by nearly two hours of programming filler during a steady summer rain, averaged 3.87 million viewers, according to Nielsen data. TNT is in the first season of a new seven-year rights agreement with NASCAR, carrying a five race 'in-season challenge' that began last weekend with the Quaker State 400 from Atlanta. The Chicago Street Race on Sunday is the second and biggest stop on the network's NASCAR tour. The cable network, which last hosted the NASCAR Cup Series in 2014, averaged 1.6 million viewers for its return covering Saturday night's wreck-filled race in Atlanta, which included a massive 23-car pileup and a 25-minute rain delay. Navigating Chicago's streets may make for an even more unpredictable race. Last week, the city shut down Balbo and Columbus Drive earlier than planned to repair a massive pavement buckle caused by the recent heat wave. To cover the Chicago event, TNT began setting up Monday in Grant Park, bringing in a tech crew of 260 people, along with a 20-person production staff and 10 announcers, working out of six mobile units and an office/trailer. A broadcast studio will be located next to the start/finish line at Buckingham Fountain. TNT will employ 50 cameras around the track to capture the race and environs, including 10 robotic cameras, six in-car cameras, and a helicopter, drone and Goodyear Blimp for aerial shots of the most unique setting for any NASCAR race. 'These guys are going to be on the track, and they're going to navigate this very, very, very narrow racetrack,' said Shannon Spake, a NASCAR broadcast veteran who hosts the pre-race and post-race coverage for TNT. 'But this is the weekend for the city of Chicago to shine.' Early forecasts, however, predict the city might once again not be shining during Sunday's race, with a 50% chance of afternoon thunderstorms. If that happens, it will fall upon Spake and her colleagues to try to keep the audience tuned in during any delays, a challenging task at best, as Chicago Street Race viewers in 2023 and 2024 can attest. 'Rain fills are like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute,' Spake said. 'Sometimes there's no commercial breaks, you don't know who's coming up to the desk. It's very much like free falling, but it's so much fun.' Meanwhile, the CW, which is also new to the Chicago Street Race, is hoping for a ratings boost from Saturday's Xfinity Series broadcast, rain or shine. The CW Network began carrying NASCAR's 33-race Xfinity Series this year, the first of a seven-year agreement. The Loop 110 will air in Chicago on Nexstar Media-owned WGN-TV, which reclaimed its CW affiliation last year after a nearly decade-long hiatus. 'This is certainly a race that pops on the schedule,' said Brad Schwartz, a media veteran who was named president of entertainment for the CW network in November 2022, one month after it was acquired by Nexstar, the nation's largest local TV station ownership group. 'And so I would expect to see one of the highest ratings.' While NBC also carried the Loop 110, most Xfinity Series races last year aired on the network's USA cable channel. Ratings are up this year, with 14 of 16 Xfinity races reaching more than 1 million viewers, according to the CW Network. Launched in 2006, the CW has long aspired to be the fifth major broadcast network, banking initially on young adult scripted dramas like 'Gossip Girl' to build its audience. Under Nexstar, the CW has been beefing up its sports programming with everything from LIV Golf and ACC college football to WWE wrestling and PBA Bowling. Sports now represent 40% of the CW's programming schedule, Schwartz said. 'In the past two years, we've gone from zero hours of sports to 500 hours of sports (per year),' Schwartz said. 'We've gone from zero viewers ever watching sports on the CW to now we've had over 40 million people watching sports on the CW.' WGN-TV, which was an inaugural affiliate of the CW Network when it launched in 2006, has seen strong ratings for the Xfinity Series this year. Seeking to leverage the hometown connection, it is heavily promoting the Chicago Street Race this week, including on-air driver interviews, promotions and a perfunctory Chicago hot dog taste test. While it is the first year for both TNT and the CW to carry the Chicago Street Race, there is some question as to whether it will be the last. This year's race completes an inaugural three-year agreement with NASCAR. The deal, struck during former Mayor Lori Lightfoot's administration, includes a two-year renewal option. DePaul partners with Spire Motorsports ahead of NASCAR Chicago Street RaceNASCAR is reportedly in negotiations to hold a street race in San Diego next year, which may be in addition to Chicago, or perhaps will replace the Chicago one. Mayor Brandon Johnson didn't answer directly when asked Tuesday if he wants the NASCAR race to continue beyond this weekend, saying 'it's about having conversations to make sure we're getting the most out of this experience.' Johnson also nodded to the rain that has plagued recent editions of the Chicago Street Race. 'First of all, we're just hoping this year there's good weather,' he said at a City Hall news conference. 'It looks like Saturday we're going to be OK. Sunday is a little iffy, a little cloudy.' Last year, the street race generated $128 million in total economic impact and drew 53,036 unique visitors, according to a study commissioned by Choose Chicago, the city's tourism arm. The nationally televised Cup Series race also generated $43.6 million in media value for Chicago, according to a companion report. If the city loses the street race, filling the marketing void won't be easy, Calkins said. 'The only way you replace this event is with another big event,' Calkins said. 'And big events aren't easy to come by, and they can be very expensive and complicated for a city to put on.'