NASCAR announced Tuesday it will race south of the border in 2025, with Mexico City's Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez hosting a Cup Series race on June 15 of next year. The event will mark the first Cup Series race outside the United States in NASCAR's modern era.
The 2.7-mile, 17-turn road course, which has regularly hosted Formula One's Mexican Grand Prix, will host a NASCAR race weekend from June 13-15 featuring the NASCAR Mexico Series and Xfinity Series in the lead-up to the Cup race. The circuit, a fixture in the Mexico Series since the tour was launched in 2004, previously hosted Xfinity Series races from 2005 to 2008, with winners including Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin, Juan Pablo Montoya and Kyle Busch.
The Mexico City race will mark the first Cup Series event outside the United States in NASCAR's modern era (1972 onward) and the first overall since 1958. The last Cup race on foreign soil took place at the Canadian Exposition Stadium in Toronto, a race won by Hall of Famer Lee Petty.
To get where we’re going, we must go where we have never been. 🇲🇽
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) August 27, 2024
Voiced by Daniel Suárez.
Para llegar a donde queremos estar, tendremos que ir a donde nunca hemos ido. 🇲🇽
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"This is a historic moment for our sport, especially for the NASCAR Cup as it gets to make its mark in Mexico," read a statement by Ben Kennedy, NASCAR senior vice president of racing strategy and development. "We've been bold in our global growth strategies, so there's no better option to take the next step than racing at the iconic Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City."
Besides bringing the highest level of stock car racing to Mexico City, the race will also mark a homecoming for Cup Series star Daniel Suarez. Suarez, a native of Monterrey, Mexico, will race in his home country after becoming the first foreign-born champion in NASCAR when he won the Xfinity Series title in 2016. Suarez has since added two career Cup victories, including earlier this year in Atlanta where he prevailed in the closest three-wide photo finish in series history.
Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez first opened in 1959 as Autódromo Magdalena Mixhuca, but was later named for Mexican racing brothers Ricardo and Pedro Rodríguez (Ricardo, the first Mexican driver to ever compete in F1, was killed in an accident at the circuit in 1962). In addition to F1 and NASCAR, the circuit has also hosted races in WEC, Trans-Am, CART and IMSA, among others.
