NASCAR Chicago was NBC’s most-watched Cup Series race in 6 years

While chunks of the inaugural NASCAR Chicago Street Race weekend were rained out, the delayed and shortened Grant Park 220 Sunday evening scored big numbers for a national television audience.

The four-hour broadcast on NBC averaged nearly 4.8 million viewers, making it the network’s most-watched Cup Series race in six years, according to preliminary Nielsen data released late Monday. Viewership peaked at 8:15 p.m., when nearly 5.4 million viewers watched New Zealand Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen win his NASCAR debut in a come-from-behind finish.

Chicago is projected to lead all markets in viewership. The city was not among the top 10 markets for last week’s NBC broadcast of the Ally 400 NASCAR race from Nashville, Tennessee, which averaged 3.2 million viewers nationally, according to Nielsen.

“This event was really all about exposing new fans to NASCAR and getting more people to understand what NASCAR is, experience it for the first time, tune in for the first time,” Julie Giese, president of the Chicago Street Race, said Monday.

The Chicago race blew away the TV ratings of the most recent Formula 1 street race in the U.S., the Miami Grand Prix on May 7, which averaged 1.65 million viewers on ABC, according to Nielsen.

The first street course in NASCAR’s 75-year history featured a 12-turn, 2.2-mile pop-up racecourse through Grant Park, with top drivers navigating closed-off streets lined with temporary fences, grandstands and hospitality suites. A separate Xfinity Series race was scheduled for Saturday, with full-length concerts planned throughout the weekend.

Mother Nature had other plans, unleashing rains that started Saturday and hit record totals ranging from 3 to 7 inches across the Chicago area Sunday, flooding viaducts, basements and parts of the Chicago Street Course.

The rain forced the cancellation of the Sunday concerts and the completion of Saturday’s Xfinity Series competition, with Cole Custer declared the winner of the race two laps short of the halfway point, a NASCAR first.

But with four hours of national TV programming scheduled, thousands of out-of-town visitors and both DuSable Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue shut down, there was a lot of incentive to get the Cup Series race in on Sunday.

The Sunday broadcast started at 4 p.m. with shots of the wet street course, race cars under covers and sparse stands with rain-drenched fans huddling in ponchos. Weather maps offered a glimpse of hope, but the 4:30 p.m. start was delayed, with no guarantee that the race would run.

For NBC, that meant running a glut of explanatory videos, interviews with drivers and a number of taped Chicago-themed features upfront, which were intended to color in the race broadcast.

“It’s a history of things that have happened to Grant Park through the years, it’s food, it’s the museums, its historical locations around the track,” Jeff Behnke, vice president of motor sports production for NBC Sports, said Friday. The network wanted to showcase the city and the festival along with the race, he said.

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The Cup Series race was delayed and still in doubt at about 5 p.m., when NBC broke into an interview with Ricky Stenhouse recounting his singing of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at Wrigley Field during a Cubs game Thursday to announce that drivers should report to their cars.

When asked if he was ready to race, Stenhouse looked down at his street clothes and offered, “No, clearly not.”

NBC was camped for days amid trailers, satellite dishes and other equipment on the south end of the course. The network brought a crew of 200 for the Chicago Street Race weekend, which also broadcast Saturday’s shortened Xfinity race on co-owned cable channel USA. The mobile facilities included control rooms, replay trailers and enough prerecorded features to fill more than 12 hours of programming.

The temporary Chicago course had 80 cameras, two drones and a fixed-wing airplane to capture the race action and the unusual backdrop provided by the city’s lakefront, skyline and Grant Park.

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Eight cars were equipped with in-car cameras to provide a driver’s view, which Sunday included a lot of water.

The Cup Series race itself was delivered “radio style,” with a main broadcast booth near the start/finish line at Buckingham Fountain, and announcers stationed at three points along the track to provide fast-paced commentary throughout.

“It’s just different because you’re down in the noise, you’re in the environment,” Behnke said. “There’s just this energy that comes out of our announcers when they’re in the middle of it.”

When the rain eventually stopped, the Grant Park 220 started at 5:15 p.m. — 45 minutes later than scheduled — with cars running slower than projected and a lot of fender benders. As the race progressed, the cars picked up the pace and the city’s skyline slowly emerged from the clouds, but the collisions continued, bringing out a bevy of yellow flags.

During the 50th lap, about a dozen cars piled up on the rain-slicked, 90-degree turn from Michigan Avenue onto Jackson Drive, a bit of cinema verite for Chicago viewers used to city driving.

The cars were equipped with windshield wipers and all-weather tires, but the lack of headlights forced NASCAR to shorten the race from 100 to 75 laps because of impending nightfall.

While the success of the race, which is projected to bring the city $114 million in economic impact, may be measured by hotel rooms and attendance, the TV time may be the most valuable benefit for Chicago, which has gotten its share of negative publicity in recent years.

Lynn Osmond, president and CEO of Choose Chicago, the city’s tourism arm, said last week that the four-hour broadcast on national TV would be invaluable for marketing the city.

“There is no way we could ever buy time like this,” Osmond said. “We don’t do any national TV — we’ve never had a budget for that. This is the closest that we’re ever going to get.”

rchannick@chicagotribune.com