NASCAR Cup Series Will Race at Mexico City in 2025

For the first time in more than 60 years, NASCAR will conduct a Cup Series points race outside the United States, announcing Tuesday that in June 2025 there would be an event at the Autodromo Hermano Rodriquez road course in Mexico City.

The June 14-15 race weekend is replacing one at Richmond Raceway, thus reducing that three-quarter-mile track to one event weekend in 2025. In addition to a Cup race, the Mexico City race weekend will have NASCAR Mexico and Xfinity series points races. The Cup Series race will air live on Prime Video, while the Xfinity event will be live on The CW.

NASCAR Executive Vice President and Chief Venue & Racing Innovation Officer Ben Kennedy said he expected Kyle Busch to be able to compete in the event. Some had questioned if Busch would be able to return to Mexico since he was arrested and detained at Mexico’s Cancun Airport in January 2023 after a handgun was discovered in his bag while he was boarding a private jet. He and wife Samantha were returning from vacation at that time.

Kennedy said the deal with the Mexico City road course was a “multi-year partnership” and NASCAR had been working on a race in Mexico for “quite a while.”

“This will mark the fifth consecutive year that we have added new venues in new markets to the Cup Series schedule,” Kennedy said. “We’ve said we wanted to do this (expand internationally) for a long time. We also wanted to make sure it was the right time, the right partners and the right location. Mexico City checked every box. To be in one of the biggest cities globally, over 20 million people live in the city, is a massive opportunity for us to bring our sport … and put it in front of millions of fans around the world …”

Mexican native Daniel Suarez, who accompanied Kennedy to Mexico City for the announcement, said competing in a Cup Series race in Mexico was a “dream come true” for him. He raced at the road course in 2014 when he was competing in the NASCAR Mexico Series.

“Today we’re making history,” Suarez said. “We’re bringing the biggest series of stock car racing in the world to Mexico City for a points race in the Modern Era. It’s unbelievable. I feel very humbled and blessed to be a part of this announcement today. The energy (here today) was unbelievable.”

Joining Suarez and Kennedy for the announcement were Federico Alaman, head of commercial partnerships for OCESA, and Jimmy Morales, CEO of NASCAR Mexico Series. OCESA works with Formula One, which races at the same course.

Kennedy points to the COVID pandemic in 2020 as contributing to the transformation in the attitude at NASCAR.

“We had to approach things differently,” Kennedy said. “We had to be bold. We had to think outside the box in order to get our events in. I think that’s permeated over the past couple of years. We’ve taken a lot of these big, bold steps, gotten outside of our comfort zone.”

The 2.674-mile road course has 17 turns and sits at an elevation of 7,342 feet. Built in 1959, the track was named for racing brothers Ricardo and Pedro Rodriguez. The circuit was remodeled in 2015 and has hosted eight Formula One races.

NASCAR first ventured outside the United States with its Cup Series on July 1, 1952, when it took an event to Stamford Park, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. That race was won by Buddy Shuman. The last international points race for the Cup Series was on July 18, 1958, at Canadian Exposition Stadium in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. That event was won by Lee Petty. NASCAR also held three exhibition races in Japan 1996-1998. The events in 1996-97 were at Suzuka, while the 1998 race was at Motegi.

The NASCAR Mexico Series has been in existence for 17 seasons.