‘CLOSER’ LEAVES QUESTION OPEN

Harvick can’t predict what’ll happen in Chicago, other than NASCAR winning over new fans

Kevin Harvick is one of only 10 drivers in NASCAR Cup Series history with 800 or more starts. His 60 Cup victories rank 10th all-time. This year’s oldest full-time Cup driver at 47, he’s a regular-season series title winner, a playoff champion

and a member of an elite foursome — with Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon and the late, great Dale Earnhardt — who have taken the checkered flag at all four crown-jewel events, the Daytona 500, the Coca-Cola 600, the Brickyard 400 and the Southern 500.

The point is, if anyone should be able to enlighten us in regard to what NASCAR’s upcoming Chicago Street Race will be like, it’s the seen-it-all Harvick, who’s currently fifth in the points standings in his final season before he’ll retire from full-time racing and jump into the FOX Sports television booth as an analyst.

So what the heck are we all in for with

the Grant Park 220 on July 2, a day after NASCAR’s shorter Xfinity Series race on the same yet-to-be-constructed downtown street course?

Will it be wild-and-crazy action, with cars pinballing off one another as drivers fight for position on a course with seven 90-degree turns and some unusually narrow stretches? Or might it be the other end of the spectrum, kind of slow and boring, because it’s simply too difficult for drivers to make passes?

“Who knows?” Harvick said by phone this week. “It’s all just pure speculation.”

Well, shoot. If he doesn’t know, we Chicagoans who aren’t exactly fluent in the

sport — the NASCAR illiterati, if you will — are left with no choice but to remain clueless.

“I learned a long time ago that you just can’t predict these things,” Harvick said. “This race could be the greatest race that you’ve ever seen, or it could be the worst one you’ve ever watched. I don’t think anybody really knows. But I think that’s the intrigue about the event.”

Cup drivers aren’t entirely thrilled about this Chicago race, mainly because what to expect is such a fuzzy matter. They can spend a bunch of hours — and some of them already have — on iRacing simulators in preparation for the action on and around

JEFF CURRY/GETTY IMAGES Kevin Harvick, one of NASCAR’s most decorated senior statesmen in his final season as a driver at 47, says there’s no way to tell what the Chicago Street Race will be like until competitors hit the course.