How Shane van Gisbergen swept NASCAR at Chicago

With its future in limbo, Shane van Gisbergen will likely be the most successful driver in the Chicago Street Race’s history. A dominant performance in Sunday’s Grant Park 165 earned him his second win of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season and a sweep of the weekend, having also claimed the Xfinity Series race on Saturday.

The Supercars star previously won the inaugural Chicago Street Race in 2023 in his maiden NASCAR start. Now a full-time Cup Series driver, he had struggled to find his footing at the highest level but continued to thrive on road courses with a win at Mexico City in June. With the summer stretch chock-full of road course events, he’s regained his stride.

Van Gisbergen won the pole but quickly fell behind Michael McDowell, who led every lap in Stage 1 and much of Stage 2 before throttle issues knocked him out of contention. Further back, van Gisbergen was more conservative by opting to pit prior to each stage break, eschewing points for better restarts.

He took the lead from Chase Briscoe on Lap 60, just before a caution was thrown for an ambulance on track that was attending to a medical emergency in the stands. On the ensuing restart on Lap 63, second-placed Ty Gibbs had a poor jump that allowed van Gisbergen to clear him.

The New Zealander faced virtually no opposition for the final 12 laps. The race ended under caution when Cody Ware lost his brakes and slammed into the Turn 6 tyre barrier.

Van Gisbergen is the first Cup Series rookie to win races since Denny Hamlin swept Pocono in 2006. He’s also just the second driver ever to sweep a NASCAR national series road course weekend, joining Kyle Larson at Watkins Glen in 2022; if regional divisions are included, Kevin Harvick won the now-ARCA West race at Sonoma Raceway followed by the Cup event (Xfinity would not race at Sonoma until 2023).

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“Epic weekend for us,” started van Gisbergen after his win in Chicago. “I’m a lucky guy. I got to drive for two great teams in JR Motorsports and Trackhouse and it just made my job easy. We had great preparation and my cars all weekend were excellent.

“Today, the strategy was a bit back and forth. I was probably a bit conservative at the start and not aggressive enough, but yeah, our pace was good, and then just believing in Stephen (Doran, crew chief). He did a great job on painting the picture on strategy again, and even though we were a little bit out of sync, it was going to work out for the better.

“Had some really great battles at the end. The guys at the end I felt were really, really strong, but we probably had a tyre advantage. Cool to win here again. I’ve had a great run at this place, and I really enjoy it.”

As much as he likes racing in the streets of Chicago, he probably won’t be doing it for much longer. While Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was positive about how the 2025 race weekend went, NASCAR’s contract with the city expires after this year with little word on an extension.

There has been speculation that NASCAR might move to Chicagoland Speedway, an oval in nearby Joliet that has not hosted stock cars since 2020, while the sanctioning body is reportedly planning on shifting its street race location to San Diego. If the Chicago Street Race gets axed after three years, van Gisbergen is the only driver to win it twice. Alex Bowman won in 2024.

SVG now the winningest foreign Cup driver

Van Gisbergen’s victory in Chicago on Sunday is his third in the Cup Series, breaking a tie with Marcos Ambrose and Juan Pablo Montoya for the most by a foreign-born driver.

Perhaps to little surprise given how unpopular oval racing is outside the United States, nearly every instance of a non-American winner has been on a road course. The exceptions are Canada’s Earl Ross, who won at Martinsville in 1974, van Gisbergen’s Mexican-American team-mate Daniel Suárez, who won at Atlanta last year, and the legendary Mario Andretti, winner of the 1967 Daytona 500. Even then, Andretti long identifies more as an American despite his Italian ancestry.

Ambrose hails from a similar background to van Gisbergen, moving to NASCAR after two Supercars Championships. The Australian would win twice at Watkins Glen in 2011 and 2012 during his seven-year Cup career.

Montoya is a Colombian and one of the most versatile drivers of all time, entering NASCAR after a successful stint in F1. His two wins also came on road circuits at Sonoma in 2007 and Watkins Glen in 2010.

Van Gisbergen also has four wins in the Xfinity Series to give him seven across the three national series, which equals him to Ambrose and Suárez. His Chicago win allows him to break his deadlock with Canadian Ron Fellows, who won twice in the Truck Series and four times in Xfinity.

“That’s a very special stat. That’s why I’m here,” said van Gisbergen. “Justin (Marks, Trackhouse owner) took a massive chance on me to bring me over, and as I’ve said many times, these races are like a holiday to me. It’s the ovals where I’m really focused on getting better and better.

“I come here and there’s no stress. People probably think there’s more stress and expectation on us, but I just get excited by it and love driving. It’s the ovals where I know I’m getting better. I’m not stressed about it and I’m not forcing it, but I love trying to progress and get better and better.

“To be a foreigner here, there’s not many of us who have broken into the sport and stayed here for too long, and pretty cool to be here, that’s for sure.”

In-Season Challenge down to 8

Despite his win in Chicago, van Gisbergen is not one step closer to earning $1 million as part of the inaugural NASCAR In-Season Challenge. Due to his poor season prior to the midseason tournament, he was not one of the 32 drivers eligible.

Chicago was the second race of the tournament; the first, Atlanta last Sunday, sliced the field from 32 to 16. The following drivers moved on to the Round of 8 after finishing ahead of their assigned rival in Chicago:

• #6 Ty Gibbs (finished second) defeated #22 A.J. Allmendinger (sixth)
• #8 Alex Bowman (eighth) defeated #9 Bubba Wallace (28th)
• #12 John Hunter Nemechek (15th) defeated #5 Chase Elliott (16th)
• #14 Zane Smith (14th) defeated #3 Chris Buescher (18th)
• #15 Ryan Preece (seventh) defeated #30 Noah Gragson (30th)
• #20 Erik Jones (25th) defeated #29 Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (31st)
• #23 Tyler Reddick (third) defeated #26 Carson Hocevar (35th)
• #32 Ty Dillon (20th) defeated #17 Brad Keselowski (37th)

While advancing in the challenge simply entails finishing ahead of your rival, Bowman did so after he and Wallace physically clashed on track. The two tangled in the closing laps while battling for seventh, culminating in Bowman clipping Wallace’s left rear and knocking him into the wall. Bowman eventually sealed the deal by hitting him again and spinning him. The pair conversed afterwards before separating without confrontation.

The third round in Sonoma will have the following matchups:

• #6 Ty Gibbs vs. #14 Zane Smith
• #8 Alex Bowman vs. #32 Ty Dillon
• #12 John Hunter Nemechek vs. #20 Erik Jones
• #15 Ryan Preece vs. Tyler Reddick

Sonoma will whittle the tournament to four for Dover, followed by a one-on-one at Indianapolis.

NASCAR 2025 Grant Park 165 – Results