Not only did Christopher Bell and Ryan Blaney lose out on a potential win in the closing laps of the Enjoy Illinois 300 at Gateway. But some teams also lost internet access, and crucial SMT data halfway through the race, according to The Athletic’s Jordan Bianchi on X.

Now most would notice the satirical complex of the situation. World Wide “Technology” Raceway was facing technical failures, almost, as if the joke seemed to want to write itself. However, Denny Hamlin notices a solemn pattern. And maybe the naming rights holders could come through with some ‘technological’ innovation to fix it before it is too late for the 400-acre facility steeped in Midwest motorsports history.

Denny Hamlin calls out World Wide Technology Raceway’s ironic issues

This marks the fourth recorded instance in the Madison, Illinois racetrack’s history when it has suffered a freak event of this caliber during a NASCAR race. Most will remember the broadcasts cutting out on their TV screens halfway through stage 2 of the Cup race only last year. A few years before that happened, Sheldon Creed’s 2021 Toyota 200 Truck Series victory at Gateway was initially brought under red flag due to a blackout caused by a blown transformer off-facility. And even before that, a reclusive 2010 incident during another Truck Race where Kevin Harvick reigned supreme, raised concerns about the racetrack’s mysterious conditions. 

Some would call it supernatural forces. Others may term it pure dumb luck. But on his post-race release of Actions Detrimental, Denny Hamlin sees the “technological” irony of the World Wide Technology Raceway. His co-host Jared Allen would bring up this overlooked topic of discussion, citing Bianchi’s Tweet. Hamlin would admit, “Yeah, there was something going on with the internet there at Gateway.”

He continued, “Last year, it shut down for like an hour. It was a long time. I don’t know how long it was out this time. Last year, Chris (Gabehart, crew chief) told me, ‘Okay we’re running blind in here. I have no SMT. I have no timing scoring.’ The pylon I don’t think worked like It was just not good. I think that’s how they operated, was off the pylon.”  Regardless, Kyle Busch’s final Cup Series victory came through at the end of these unfortunate events, as Denny Hamlin finished second behind him. Notably, spectators at that time were understandably frustrated by these eerie disruptions, as they faced a wait time of upwards of an hour. caused by prior events. 

First, debris from Gateway’s impressive fireworks intro along the backstretch required clearance once the pyro residue settled on the race track. Only moments later, after about 5 laps, lightning strikes within an 8-mile radius would bring the enigmatic events to a halt at WWT Raceway. However, as Hamlin rhetorically noted, “But I think this track had power issues before. Didn’t the lights go out, or something like that?” Concluding his thoughts to his co-host on the podcast, he then announced assumedly referring to the 2021 Toyota 200, “I just remembered something at Gateway where they’ve had power issues even before we came there. So there is something in the infrastructure they’ve got to upgrade!”

Allen couldn’t resist the well-in-due quip when he replied to Hamlin, saying, “It’s called the World Wide Technology Raceway. Can we get some better technology?” As has been the norm for every episode of Actions Detrimental, Denny took it a step further when he name-dropped the founder of World Wide Technology (WWT) to fix the Madison race track’s technological woes: “Someone call Dave Steward. They’ll get this thing fixed.”

Is the Midwest facing a power grid crisis?

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Steward and St Louis University graduate Jim Kavanagh banded together in 1990 to form WWT, a privately-held technology services provider based in St. Louis, Missouri. Since then their venture has become the biggest African-American-owned company in the United States with an announced annual revenue of around 17 billion dollars. When they acquired the naming rights from owner Curtis Francois in 2019, WWT Raceway underwent major changes. Mainly including the completion of a 2.000 mi road course that glazed over Turns 1 & 2 of the oval track, and the acquisition of the adjacent 7,178-acre Gateway National Golf Links.

Soon after NASCAR agreed with the stakeholders involved to add the 1.25-mile racetrack’s first Cup Series date on its calendar, starting in 2022. Before this, Madison’s biggest outdoor entertainment facility had only hosted Xfinity & Truck Series races alongside various other regional &national events. To accommodate the premier-series festivities, Gateway would experience a cool 40-million-dollar revamp aiming to “modernize” the track to meet current standards. The point is, that all the concerned officials seem to be taking the race track in the correct trajectory, evident from the growing acclaim of WWT Raceway.

However, diminishing natural resources and climate change, coupled with incoming solar storms pose a harrowing picture for non-sustainable energy sources. Since over half of Illinois’s energy comes from nuclear power, that argument about not needing nuclear does appear weak. Nevertheless, the US Energy Information Administration reveals that the Prairie State is the fifth largest energy-consuming region in the nation.

Moreover, the power grid operator for 15 Midwest and Central US states including Illinois, Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO for short projected a widening supply deficit in 2022, on their annual power outage by over 2 GW per year in The Midwest. A single gigawatt of power can supply enough electricity for roughly one million U.S. homes. Yet, on a hot summer day, it would power only around a potential number of 200,000.