9 of the Greatest NASCAR Drivers from Illinois

Chicago, home to this weekend’s first NASCAR Cup Series street race, is an outlier in the world of stock car racing.

The capitals of racing in American-made sedans always will be Daytona Beach, Darlington, Charlotte and Martinsville. But Chicago, best known in the sports world as home to the Bulls, Blackhawks, Cubs, White Sox and, of course, Da Bears, has a racing background bigger than most might anticipate.

Racing outside the Southeastern heartland of NASCAR is nothing new, even in the sport’s early days. In fact, in 1949, the first season of what now is the Cup Series, three of the schedule’s eight races were outside the South (two in Pennsylvania and one in New York).

Illinois checks in with perhaps a surprising number of NASCAR personalities – and one very large presence. In 1956, the Cup Series raced at Soldier Field, which 15 years later would become the home of the National Football League Bears. Sunday’s Chicago Street Race will bring NASCAR thunder back to the streetscape near Soldier Field, almost 70 years after the great Fireball Roberts won that 200-lapper on July 21, 1956.

Across the years, Illinois names have raced under the NASCAR spotlight – some shining brighter than others.

Here's some of Illinois' finest:

Fred Lorenzen

Fearless Freddy is the name most often associated with NASCAR and the Chicago area. A native of Elmhurst, about 20 miles west of Chicago, Lorenzen was a stock car superstar in the 1960s. He won 26 Cup races on the way to ultimate election to the NASCAR Hall of Fame in the Class of 2015.

Tom Pistone

The appropriately named Pistone was one of the street-tough hot-rodders who grew up around the edges of Chicago’s downtown and turned their love for fast cars into success on track. Pistone eventually moved to North Carolina but was a star of weekly stock car racing events at Soldier Field prior to his jump into NASCAR.

Pistone and other Chicago-area drivers were hometown heroes at Soldier Field, where motorsports entrepreneur Andy Granatelli put tens of thousands in the grandstands to watch wild Late Model events. Pistone won Cup races at Trenton, N.J. and Richmond, Va. in 1959.

Danica Patrick

Patrick is from Roscoe, Ill., about 90 miles northwest of Chicago. Although she was winless (and also without a top-five finish) in 191 starts in the Cup Series, Patrick drew attention in virtually every NASCAR garage she visited from 2012 to 2018. Her highlight was a Daytona 500 pole win in 2013.