Shane van Gisbergen completed a sweep on the Chicago Street Course on Sunday, winning the NASCAR Cup Series race on the tricky downtown circuit.

It was van Gisbergen’s second victory of the season and his third career Cup win. The Trackhouse Racing driver also won in Chicago in 2023, becoming the first driver to take his Cup Series debut since Johnny Rutherford in the second qualifying race at Daytona in 1963.

Ty Gibbs was second, and Tyler Reddick finished third. Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch rounded out the top five.

It was a dominant weekend for van Gisbergen, a three-time champion in Australia’s Supercars. The 36-year-old New Zealand native won the Xfinity Series race from the pole Saturday. He also was the top qualifier for the Cup race.

Michael McDowell joined van Gisbergen on the front row and quickly moved in front. He won Stage 1 and led for 31 laps before he was derailed by a throttle cable issue.

Van Gisbergen regained the lead when he passed Chase Briscoe with 16 laps left. As fog moved into downtown Chicago with thunderstorms in the forecast, 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 12th.

William Byron’s day was cut short by a clutch problem. The Hendrick Motorsports driver began the day on top of the series standings.

After McDowell seized the lead early in the race, Carson Hocevar caused a multicar crash when he hit the wall and spun out between Turns 10 and 11. Brad Keselowski, Austin Dillon, Daniel Suárez and Will Brown were among the drivers collected in the wreck.

“I didn’t see it until the last second,” Keselowski said. “I slowed down and I actually felt I was gonna get stopped and then I just kind of got ran over from behind. It’s just a narrow street course and sometimes there’s nowhere to go.”

Ty Dillon and Reddick moved into the third round of NASCAR’s inaugural in-season tournament when Keselowski and Hocevar were unable to finish the race. Dillon, the No. 32 seed, eliminated Keselowski after he upset top-seeded Denny Hamlin last weekend at Atlanta.

Gibbs, Preece, Alex Bowman, John H. 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 course, won his head-to-head matchup with Bubba Wallace. Bowman and Wallace made contact as they battled for position late in the race after they also tangled in Chicago last year.

The Associated Press
Shane van Gisbergen drives to Victory Lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series auto race at the Grant Park 165, Sunday.

CHICAGO — Shane van Gisbergen burned out his tires in celebration, sending white smoke into the air. He signed a rugby ball and punted it into the stands in downtown Chicago.

It was a familiar scene.

Van Gisbergen completed a Windy City sweep Sunday, winning the NASCAR Cup Series race on the tricky street course in downtown Chicago.

“Epic weekend for us. I’m a lucky guy,” van Gisbergen said.

A talented one, too.

The 36-year-old New Zealand native became the second driver to sweep the Xfinity and Cup races in a single weekend from the pole, joining Kyle Busch at Indianapolis in 2016. With his third career Cup win, he also became the winningest foreign-born driver on NASCAR’s top series.

It was van Gisbergen’s second victory of the season after the Trackhouse Racing driver also won last month on a Mexico City road course.

“He’s the best road course stock car racer that I’ve ever seen,” Trackhouse owner Justin Marks said. “I think when he’s done with us all and walks away from the sport, I think he’s going to walk away as the best road course racer that this sport has ever seen.”

Marks brought van Gisbergen over from Australia’s Supercars for the first edition of NASCAR’s Chicago experiment in 2023, and he became the first driver to win his Cup debut since Johnny Rutherford in the second qualifying race at Daytona in 1963.

He also won Chicago’s Xfinity Series stop last year and the first stage in the Cup race before he was knocked out by a crash.

“This joint, it’s changed my life,” van Gisbergen said. “I didn’t have any plans to do more NASCAR races when I first came over here, and I never thought I’d be in NASCAR full time.”

In what might be the last NASCAR race on the downtown Chicago circuit, Ty Gibbs was second and Tyler Reddick finished third. Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch rounded out the top five.

“My team called a great strategy and got me in position to get me up front to compete for the win,” Gibbs said. “It worked out for us today, so I’m glad to have a good finish, but we wish we could have gone for the win.”

Michael McDowell joined van Gisbergen on the front row and quickly moved in front. He won Stage 1 and led for 31 laps before he was derailed by a throttle cable issue.

Van Gisbergen regained the lead when he passed Chase Briscoe with 16 laps left. As fog and rain moved into 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 12th.

“I thought overall it was a pretty decent day. It was nice to win that stage,” Blaney said.

William Byron’s day was cut short by a clutch problem. The Hendrick Motorsports driver leads the point standings by 13 points over Chase Elliott.

After McDowell seized the lead early in the race, Carson Hocevar caused a multicar crash when he hit the wall and spun out between Turns 10 and 11. Brad Keselowski, Austin Dillon, Daniel Suárez and Will Brown were among the drivers collected in the wreck.

“I didn’t see it until the last second,” Keselowski said. “I slowed down and I actually felt I was going to get stopped and then I just kind of got ran over from behind. It’s just a narrow street course and sometimes there’s nowhere to go.”

Ty Dillon and Reddick moved into the third round of NASCAR’s inaugural in-season tournament when Keselowski and Hocevar were unable to finish the race. Dillon, the No. 32 seed, eliminated Keselowski after he upset top-seeded Denny Hamlin last weekend at Atlanta.

Gibbs, Preece, Alex Bowman, John H. 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 course, won his head-to-head matchup with Bubba Wallace. Bowman and Wallace made contact as they battled for position late in the race after they also tangled in Chicago last year.

“I wasn’t expecting that to happen or to get raced like that, but we did,” Bowman said. “We just have to move on from it and keep digging. I don’t really know what I could have done much different.”

Top-20 finish

Katherine Legge finished 19th for her best career Cup result. She became the first woman to finish in the top 20 in a Cup race since Danica Patrick at Texas in November 2017.

Legge was the first woman to qualify for the Cup race in downtown Chicago.

Up next

The Cup Series is at Sonoma Raceway in California on Sunday, July 13.

Filmmaker and longtime motorsport enthusiast Keanu Reeves announced a new multi-part, unscripted documentary series produced in partnership with North One, part of the All3Media group, that showcases the behind-the-scenes story of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team’s effort to join the pinnacle of world motorsport. Made possible by exclusive access from Cadillac Formula 1 Team, TWG Motorsports and General Motors (GM), the series traces the creation of the sport’s newest and uniquely American team as it prepares for its debut at the 2026 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season opener in Melbourne.

Reeves rejoins the production team from North One with his own KR+SH production company for this new series, serving as host and executive producer mere months after his International Emmy-award win for the acclaimed Disney+ docuseries “Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story.” Developed by Emmy-award-winning director and executive producer Simon Hammerson and three-time BAFTA-winning executive producer Neil Duncanson, the Cadillac Formula 1 Team docuseries brings together a powerhouse of creative talent to capture the ultimate story of sporting jeopardy in the high-octane world of Formula 1 and offers audiences a trackside seat for the whole ride.

“I’m very honored and excited to be a part of telling the remarkable Cadillac Formula 1 Team story and its incredible journey into the world of Formula 1 racing,” said Reeves. “Our goal with the docuseries is to bring audiences into the heart of this journey and showcase what it takes to participate in one of the most exclusive sports arenas in the world.”

Exploring Challenges of Creating a Competitive Team in a Short Time

The documentary follows the Cadillac Formula 1 Team, launched by TWG Motorsports in partnership with GM, as it embarks on the formidable task of building a Formula 1 organization from the ground up. Audiences will get an intimate look at the unique challenges of assembling a competitive team on an accelerated timeline and receive a first-hand account of the vision behind establishing a distinctly American presence in a sport long dominated by European powerhouses.

By documenting the challenges, setbacks, drive and determination required to build a new contender in Formula 1, the series will captivate both motorsport fans and viewers interested in stories of resilience, cultural aspiration and the pursuit of ambitious goals. The story will also explore the journey to build the first American-based team amidst the backdrop of Formula 1’s continuing growth with audiences in the U.S. and around the world.

“This is a story of bold ambition and relentless drive,” said Dan Towriss, CEO of TWG Motorsports and the Cadillac Formula 1 Team. “We’re honored to work with Keanu, whose passion and knowledge of racing run deep, and proud to partner with GM on this incredible story. We have an opportunity to welcome a new generation of fans to Formula 1, and Keanu’s creativity is the perfect spark to ignite that journey.”

“General Motors and TWG Motorsports joined forces on a bold mission—to build a uniquely American Formula 1 team,” said Mark Reuss, GM president. “It’s a thrill to have Keanu Reeves document the Cadillac Formula 1 Team’s journey to our first season in the FIA Formula One World Championship.”

Several streets surrounding the NASCAR Chicago Street Race course were slated to reopen immediately as the two-day event wrapped up on Sunday evening.

Select streets were expected to begin reopening following the conclusion of the event, Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications said, noting the priority streets to reopen were DuSable Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue.

Other closures will remain in effect as the track wall, fence, and viewing structures are taken down. Curious about when other streets will reopen?

Here’s the full reopening schedule from the race website:

Monday, July 7

6 a.m. – DuSable Lake Shore Drive northbound between McFetridge Drive and Randolph Street

10 a.m. – Michigan Avenue between Roosevelt Road and Monroe Street

Tuesday, July 8

6 a.m. – Columbus Drive between Monroe Street and Jackson Drive

6 a.m. – Monroe Street between Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive

6 a.m. – Indiana Avenue northbound between Roosevelt Road and 13^th Street

6 a.m. – Roosevelt Road between Indiana Avenue and Michigan Avenue

10 p.m. – Jackson Drive between Columbus Drive and South DuSable Lake Shore Drive

11:59 p.m. – DuSable Lake Shore Drive southbound between McFetridge Drive and Randolph Street

11:59 p.m. – Roosevelt Road between DuSable Lake Shore Drive and Indiana Avenue

11:59 p.m. – Monroe Street between Columbus Drive and South DuSable Lake Shore Drive

Wednesday, July 9

8 p.m. – Congress Plaza Drive (Entire circle)

Thursday, July 10

10 p.m. – Jackson Drive between Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive

Friday, July 11

6 a.m. – Balbo Drive between Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive

11:59 p.m. – Columbus Drive between Roosevelt Road and Jackson Drive

11:59 p.m. – Ida B. Wells Drive between Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive

Monday, July 14

11:59 p.m. – Balbo Drive between Columbus Drive and South DuSable Lake Shore Drive

This article is posted in collaboration with an outside partnership client. The opinions and information contained within do not necessarily represent Frontstretch and its staff.

The roar of the engines hasn’t changed. The smell of fuel, rubber and tension still hangs thick over the tarmac. But something else is new. Look closer at the liveries flashing past at 220 mph.

What used to be logos for oil giants and energy drinks has been replaced by cryptographic symbols, QR codes and pixel-perfect digital brands. In 2025, crypto isn’t just a spectator on the sidelines of motorsport. It’s in the driver’s seat.

From pit lanes to paddocks, crypto firms have accelerated their way into sponsorship deals that are rewriting the economics of racing. And it’s not just flashy decals or token giveaways.

Behind the scenes, blockchain technology is worming its way into how teams are financed, how data is shared, and how fans interact with the sport.

It’s a shift happening as rapidly as the Bitcoin price today flickers across dashboards in real time — both volatile and strangely reliable.

Growing Financial Influence: Recent Crypto Sponsorship Deals in Racing

The change began quietly. A logo on a driver’s cap. A token-based loyalty program tucked into the fine print of a team’s merchandise launch. Then it got louder.

In 2024 and early 2025, crypto brands began signing headline sponsorship deals with top-tier racing teams. Whole garages were rebranded. Hospitality suites were digitized. Payments, bonuses, and even some contracts moved onto the blockchain.

Unlike past waves of sponsor trends — be it telecoms in the 2000s or fintech in the 2010s — this one brought its own infrastructure. These weren’t just logos paying for visibility. These were active collaborators.

They brought tokens for fan voting, wallets for ticket access and smart contracts for real-time bonus disbursements based on podium finishes.

The financial impact was immediate. Teams once scrambling for seasonal backers suddenly had multi-year runway.

Smaller outfits, once dependent on a handful of legacy investors, found new life in tokenized funding rounds.

Even development academies began accepting crypto as a form of payment. And in a sport where milliseconds cost millions, that liquidity mattered.

Blockchain Branding in the Paddock: Changing the Look and Feel of Race Day

Stand in the paddock at a 2025 Grand Prix or Super Speedway event and you can see the shift. Screens light up with token price tickers. Trackside banners flash with blockchain slogans instead of banking ads. Even the VIP passes are essentially NFTs now.

It’s not just marketing. It’s a brand ethos. Crypto-backed sponsors tend to lean hard into a future-facing aesthetic — sleek, abstract, a little mysterious. It mirrors the feel of something like Blade Runner or Tron: industrial meets digital. Traditional teams have had to recalibrate. Glossy brochures and hospitality menus have been replaced by augmented reality experiences and scannable wearables.

F1 teams especially have embraced this integration. Long known for pushing boundaries in both tech and sponsorship, the F1 ecosystem has treated crypto not as a gimmick but as a foundation.

Some teams now use blockchain tech to manage supply chains for car components. Others have experimented with fan-issued governance tokens, letting supporters vote on livery designs or secondary driver choices.

Crypto is not on the fringes of race day anymore. It is baked into the track.

Technological Innovations: How Teams Integrate Crypto and Blockchain

Beyond the logos and stunts lies the deeper layer: how crypto tools are helping teams operate more efficiently. Smart contracts, for example, now handle portions of driver incentives, race-day bonuses and supplier agreements. Funds release instantly when conditions are met. No paperwork. No middlemen.

Telemetry, too, is seeing a shift. While raw race data still sits in secure on-site servers, some teams now distribute anonymized fragments on blockchain platforms.

Why? Transparency. Traceability. And in a few rare cases, to let fans stake predictions on tire strategies in real time.

Digital ticketing has also been overhauled. Blockchain-based passes cut fraud and scalping nearly overnight. Even merchandising uses blockchain to authenticate signed items and limit counterfeits.

If you buy a cap signed after a victory lap in Bahrain, the digital record proves it wasn’t just slapped on by a printer in the suburbs of somewhere else.

And the tools aren’t just limited to elite racing. Semi-pro and regional circuits are beginning to explore crypto-backed models to support young drivers and bring fan ownership into the sport.

Regulatory, Compliance & Sponsorship Hurdles Ahead

Of course, not every curve has been smooth. With crypto comes compliance. Motorsport bodies are now in deep discussions with regulators across continents to ensure that token-funded campaigns meet advertising laws, sponsorship guidelines and financial disclosures.

The volatility of digital assets has also been a challenge. Some teams negotiated contracts pegged to token values, only to see those values spike or tumble within months. Risk management has had to evolve.

Legal teams now include blockchain analysts. Sponsorship departments consult live dashboards before signing deals.

And then there’s the question of audience trust. Some racing fans, especially the traditionalists, are still wary. They want the engines loud, the gearboxes precise, and the sponsorships understandable.

They don’t want to feel like every race is a crypto ad with a car attached. Teams and sponsors have had to balance integration with respect.

The Future: Predictions and Perspectives from Inside the Racing Community

If you talk to drivers, engineers, and managers in the paddock, most agree on one thing: Crypto isn’t leaving. In fact, its role will deepen. Expect more fan governance, more blockchain-based voting on race elements and more hybrid financial structures between fiat and crypto for teams and vendors alike.

Nascar teams, traditionally conservative in their partnerships, are beginning to open up. 2025 has seen the first wave of full-car wraps bearing crypto brands across American ovals. Regional circuits, long fueled by energy drinks and tire manufacturers, are watching closely. Crypto offers speed and reach, two things racing has always chased.

In F1, the conversation is already past “should we?” and deep into “how far can we go?” The bleeding edge is now fan micro-investment platforms, trackside token drops and augmented broadcasts where every overtaking move triggers a blockchain stat.

It feels like the start of something bigger.

Crypto in the Driver’s Seat

This isn’t a flash in the pan. It’s a gear shift. As the engines howl and the tires burn, crypto is embedding itself into the very chassis of modern motorsport. The partnerships are more than marketing — they are reshaping how teams are built, funded and followed.

So next time you see a QR code streak past on the rear wing of a race car, don’t dismiss it. That blur might just be the future. And whether you’re in the stands, behind the wheel or checking the bitcoin price today from your phone, the race is on.

And crypto, for now, is keeping pace.