VAN GISBERGEN SWEEPS CHICAGO AS TEMPERS FLARE ACROSS THE FIELD

CHICAGO – Shane Van Gisbergen scored his second win of 2025 on the streets of Chicago, sweeping the Xfinity and Cup races in the Windy City.

The Auckland, New Zealand native picked up his third career Cup Series trophy to become the winningest foreign-born driver in top level of NASCAR. Van Gisbergen also won both races from the pole and is the first to accomplish this feat since Kyle Busch at Indianapolis in 2016.

“I love this place,” Van Gisbergen said before punting a celebratory rugby ball to the fans atop the frontstretch. The inaugural Chicago Cup winner has now won four of five races at the track.

“What an amazing weekend for me,” Van Gisbergen said after leading 26 of 75 laps. “I’m a lucky guy to drive some great cars.”

Van Gisbergen and his No. 88 team advanced from 10th to fifth in the Playoff standings. The former V8 Supercars champ has two more shots to win road races before the post-season begins.

Once again, 23XI driver Tyler Reddick found himself chasing down the leaders late in Chicago. However, he was unable to make up the distance to Van Gisbergen and second place Ty Gibbs.

“It's great to finish (third), but it's a bummer when you look at how much ground we made up,” Reddick said. “We just haven't gotten the job done, but we've shown a lot of speed.”

Reddick backed up last week’s Atlanta finish with a podium, his first consecutive top-fives of the season. Reddick’s goal remains winning the regular season by putting complete races together. 

The other threat to Van Gisbergens dominance came from the Spire Motorsports stable. Road ringer Michael McDowell led a race-high 31 laps before a broken throttle cable ended his day.

Another Spire driver, Carson Hocevar, got into trouble early in Stage 1. Hocevar started third behind teammate McDowell, but clobbered the wall in Turn 10 and triggered a multi-car melee.

Tempers between Alex Bowman and Bubba Wallace flared up from a tangle during the 2024 race. Last year, the two made contact, causing Wallace to spin while Bowman won the race.

With 8 laps remaining on Sunday, both drivers battled for position inside the top 10. They made contact several times before Wallace was spun from the front bumper of Bowman’s No. 48 car.

“I thought we had squashed our beef, but clearly did not,” Bowman said to reporters after the race. “Unfortunately that happened and tore up our car a bunch, and obviously killed his day.”

They were paired in a Round 2 matchup for the In-Season Tournament with Bowman advancing via an eighth place. Wallace finished 28th and they briefly exchanged words after the checkered.

Denny Hamlin recovered from a 40th place starting position due to a blown engine on the first lap of practice to finish fourth. It was Hamlin’s best road course finish since 2023 Watkins Glen.

Kyle Busch started sixth and earned nine stage points then received a penalty for driving through too many pit boxes during Stage 2. Busch fell a lap down but rebounded to come home in fifth.

A bad weekend went worse William Byron on Sunday afternoon. Byron damaged the car in practice and dropped to the rear of the field only to suffer from a clutch issue on the first lap.

Byron now has back-to-back DNFs and lost a significant number of points to teammates Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson. Byron now sits only 13 points ahead of Elliott and 19 over Larson.

Next weekend, NASCAR rolls into Wine Country for the Toyota Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway. With the Clash moving to Bowman Gray, this is Californina’s only NASCAR event.

The track features 160 feet of elevation change, the most of any road course. Coverage from the 12 turns of Sonoma begins at 3:30 p.m. ET on TNT Sports with streaming found on MAX.