The NASCAR Cup Series drivers will be on the Chicago Street Course this week for the Grant Park 165. This is the only true street course on the schedule. There are two road courses left (Watkins Glen and the Charlotte Roval), but this will be run on some of the main streets of the Windy City, including Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue.

The drivers will have to navigate 12 turns and 2.2 miles worth of track weaving through the Grant Park area of Chicago, hence the name. Weather was a major factor last year and could be again here. We have a cut down here from 220 miles to 165 miles, hence the name change.

This is the 20th race of the season, meaning there are only six more regular season races after this and 16 races left for the season.

Another automatic berth in the postseason was claimed last week in Nashville when Joey Logano took the checkered flag. Logano is still just 14th in points with that victory and only has two other top-five finishes, but he’s secured a spot in the postseason, unless there are more than 16 winners by September 8. There are now 11 winners occupying the 16 playoff spots.

Christopher Bell picked up his third win of the season two races ago at New Hampshire and is tied with Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin, and William Byron for the most wins. Tyler Reddick, Chase Elliott, Brad Keselowski, Daniel Suarez, Austin Cindric, Ryan Blaney, and Logano are the other winners. Nobody has exactly two wins on the season, but we’ll see if that changes this week.

Bell now leads with 24 Bonus Points after a strong performance last week with wins in Stages 1 and 2 and the most laps led, but he finished 36th. Larson is second in Bonus Points with 23. Hamlin has 19, even though he’s been outside the top 10 in four straight races and outside the top 25 in three of them. Byron is all alone in fourth with 16 points and is the only other driver in double figures. The first playoff race is the Quaker State 400 on September 8 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

The Grant Park 220 was last year’s race and that was won by Shane van Gisbergen, who became the first driver to win in his first career start since 1963 per the official NASCAR website.

The rest of the top 10 was Justin Haley, Elliott, Larson, Kyle Busch, Cindric, Michael McDowell, Logano, Ty Gibbs, and Chris Buescher. Bell won Stages 1 and 2. There were only seven lead changes among five different drivers.