Shane van Gisbergen Dominates Chicago in an Unprecedented Display of Skill
Pilot Shane van Gisbergen set the Chicago asphalt on fire, celebrating a victory that established him as the undisputed king of the weekend. With a display of mastery, the New Zealander not only won the NASCAR Cup Series race on the challenging street circuit, but also completed a perfect weekend, demonstrating his exceptional talent. Van Gisbergen, 36, became the second driver in NASCAR history to win both the Xfinity and Cup races in the same weekend, emulating Kyle Busch’s feat in Indianapolis in 2016. With this victory, the third of his Cup Series career, he also became the foreign-born driver with the most wins in NASCAR’s premier category. This victory is van Gisbergen’s second of the season, after his triumph at the Mexico circuit last month.“He’s the best road course racer I’ve ever seen,” stated Justin Marks, owner of Trackhouse Racing. “I think when he retires from the sport, he’ll go down as the best road course racer this sport has ever seen.”
Justin Marks
In what could be the last NASCAR race on the Chicago downtown circuit, Ty Gibbs took second place and Tyler Reddick finished third. Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch rounded out the top five.“This place has changed my life,” van Gisbergen said. “I had no plans to do more NASCAR racing when I first arrived here, and I never thought I would be in NASCAR full-time.”
Shane van Gisbergen
Michael McDowell joined van Gisbergen on the front row and quickly took the lead. He won Stage 1 and led for 31 laps before being derailed by a throttle cable issue. Van Gisbergen regained the lead when he passed Chase Briscoe with 16 laps to go. With fog and rain entering downtown Chicago, van Gisbergen controlled the action the rest of the way. AJ Allmendinger was sixth and Ryan Preece finished seventh. Ryan Blaney, who won the second stage, was twelfth.“My team called a great strategy and put me in a position to compete for the win,” Gibbs said. “It worked for us today, so I’m glad to have a good finish, but we wish we could have gone for the win.”
Ty Gibbs
William Byron’s day was interrupted by a clutch issue. The Hendrick Motorsports driver leads the standings by 13 points over Chase Elliott. After McDowell took the lead at the beginning of the race, Carson Hocevar caused a multiple-car crash when he hit the wall and spun between turns 10 and 11. Brad Keselowski, Austin Dillon, Daniel Suárez, and Will Brown were among the drivers involved in the accident.“Overall, I think it was a pretty decent day. It was good to win that stage,” Blaney said.
Ryan Blaney
Ty Dillon and Reddick advanced to the third round of the NASCAR season-opening tournament when Keselowski and Hocevar failed to finish the race. Dillon, the No. 32 seed, eliminated Keselowski after defeating the number one seed Denny Hamlin last weekend in Atlanta. Gibbs, Preece, Alex Bowman, John Hunter Nemechek, Zane Smith, and Erik Jones also advanced. The winner of the five-race, bracket-style tournament takes home a $1 million prize. Bowman, the 2024 champion on the downtown street circuit, won his head-to-head matchup with Bubba Wallace. Bowman and Wallace made contact while battling for position late in the race after they also tangled in Chicago last year.“I didn’t see it until the last second,” Keselowski said. “I braked and felt like I was going to stop and then I got run over from behind. It’s just a narrow street circuit and sometimes there’s nowhere to go.”
Brad Keselowski
“I didn’t expect that to happen or to get run like that, but we did,” Bowman said. “We just have to move on and keep digging. I really don’t know what I could have done differently.”
Alex Bowman
