Sophie Cunningham, Busta Rhymes and More Stars Take Over NASCAR Weekend at Gateway
· Yahoo Sports
There was a lot happening at World Wide Technology Raceway this weekend, and not all of it involved race cars.
NASCAR rolled into Gateway for the second race of the Chase, but the racing quickly became only part of what was happening around the track. By the end of the weekend, a WNBA star had popped up in the garage, a Hall of Fame baseball manager had taken center stage and some of the biggest names in hip-hop had performed for NASCAR fans.
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Sophie Cunningham was there. So were Busta Rhymes, Rick Ross and the Ying Yang Twins. Country music had a major presence, too, with Old Dominion and Chris Janson among the weekend’s performers.
It made Gateway feel less like a standalone NASCAR race and more like a full-blown sports and entertainment weekend.
A big reason for that was the Confluence Music Festival, which returned to World Wide Technology Raceway with more than 30 national and local acts scheduled across three days. But the crossover went well beyond the concert stages.
Sophie Cunningham Turns Heads at Gateway
One of Sunday’s biggest celebrity sightings came before the Cup Series field ever took the green flag.
Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham was at the track for the Enjoy Illinois 300, spending time inside the NASCAR garage and taking in the scene before the race. She was also photographed with Tyler Reddick, giving NASCAR and WNBA fans a crossover moment that quickly made the rounds on social media.
Cunningham has become one of the more recognizable personalities in women’s basketball, so seeing her show up in the middle of a NASCAR garage naturally drew plenty of attention.
She wasn’t the only major sports name at Gateway, either.
Three-time World Series champion and Baseball Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa served as grand marshal for Sunday’s Cup race, adding another sport entirely to the mix.
And then there was the music.
NASCAR Fans Get Busta Rhymes, Rick Ross and the Ying Yang Twins
Saturday might have produced the most unexpected lineup of the entire weekend.
The Ying Yang Twins performed at the track. Rick Ross followed as a special guest. Then Busta Rhymes took the stage ahead of Saturday night’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race.
Yes, all three. At a NASCAR weekend.
It was a pretty dramatic departure from the kind of pre-race entertainment traditionally associated with the sport, and judging by the crowds gathered around the stage, fans weren’t complaining.
The music didn’t stop there.
Stella Lefty performed Sunday before the Cup race, while Chris Janson was also part of the day’s lineup. Dasha and Old Dominion were scheduled to keep the festival going after the Enjoy Illinois 300, giving fans a reason to stick around long after the checkered flag.
The variety might have been the most interesting part. Gateway didn’t simply book one big act and call it a weekend. Hip-hop, country and emerging artists all shared space with NASCAR across three days.
Gateway Turned a NASCAR Race Into Something Bigger
NASCAR has spent years trying to make race weekends about more than the few hours between the green and checkered flags. Gateway offered a pretty good example of what that can actually look like.
Fans who came for the racing could see Busta Rhymes, Rick Ross and the Ying Yang Twins on Saturday. A day later, Sophie Cunningham was walking around the garage while Tony La Russa prepared to give the command ahead of the Cup race. Country acts took over the stages around them.
None of that overshadowed what happened on the track. Kyle Larson’s return to Victory Lane, a chaotic afternoon of brake failures and crashes and the resulting shakeup in the Chase ultimately provided more than enough NASCAR drama on its own.
But it gave the weekend an entirely different atmosphere.
For three days, Gateway wasn’t simply the next stop on the NASCAR schedule. It became a meeting point for racing, basketball, baseball, country music and hip-hop.
And judging by the names that showed up, NASCAR had no trouble drawing a crowd.