At the door of the DGM Racing trailer, Janice Kennett sat peacefully in the double shade of a tent and her Chevrolet baseball cap.

She took advantage of a quiet moment between her caretaker duties for the racing team: Kennett washes all the drivers’ suits and ensures the team is stocked with cold drinks and snacks. She and her husband, Gary — who drives the truck for the team — have been with DGM Racing for four years. They drive to all 33 race weekends from their home in Lake Wales, Florida, where Kennett uses her own washing machine to do the team’s laundry.

“People work better when they’re taken care of,” Kennett said.

Behind the many wire fences surrounding NASCAR’s fan area, dozens of trailers and hauling trucks are lined up like oversized dominoes. Back here, everyone wears long black pants or heavy suits, protecting themselves from the gasoline and asphalt that makes racing dangerous for the large crews that come with every driver.

This is the sweaty world of NASCAR, where mechanics lie belly-up beneath racecars, their hands covered in grime. It’s not glamorous or easy, but this work is the lifeblood of American racing.

Late Saturday morning, water poured out from under the hood of Joey Gase Motorsports’ No. 53 car, driven by Sage Karam. Five team members, in green and black racing shirts, crowded around the vehicle. Sweat ran down everyone’s foreheads as one mechanic crawled under the car, and two others set up a tent to shield them from the sun as they worked.

Mechanics often perform this kind of maintenance. When drivers do their practice loops at the beginning of a race weekend, their cars accrue all sorts of damage. The JR Motorsports team had at least 12 people working on one of its cars, while the Joey Gase group did its repairs just a few trailers away.

Behind another fence, Sunoco employees distributed dozens of gas tanks. To their right, technicians from Goodyear Racing carefully studied piles of tires, which were stacked up all over the NASCAR area.

Getting tires to cars is one of the more complex aspects of a race. Rick Heinrich, the Goodyear Racing product manager for NASCAR, said that his company provides roughly 3,000 tires to cars every NASCAR race weekend. Cup Series vehicles get a maximum of seven pairs of tires for each race. Xfinity Series cars get a maximum of six pairs. Most teams hold onto a pair or two of “scuffs” — used tires — as backups. Almost all the tires used in a race weekend are immediately recycled into rubber dust.

Heinrich and his team are usually the first to arrive at a race site. They have to unload and organize thousands of tires, and then collect data on every tire so that small manufacturing discrepancies can be accounted for and explained to teams, which receive tires at random.

“You really can’t help but to have an appreciation, or be somewhat of a fan of racing, when you work for Goodyear,” Heinrich said, “because, really, the core of the automotive business is racing.”

If it rains, all those numbers change, and teams are allotted an additional four sets of wet-weather tires. They’re necessary to prevent slippage when it rains, but will slow down a driver once the track dries up again.

The Chicago Street Race, with its imperfect asphalt and lines of yellow and white paint for average city drivers, offers an unusual track for Goodyear tires. That aspect, however, is out of Heinrich’s hands.

“That’s why this place is so special,” Heinrich said. “It’s just different. It’s not a purpose-built racetrack.”

The five-person crew at Cope Family Racing would agree that this weekend is different. Usually, the team has a trailer with all of its tools right behind the pit box. But because the pit road area is so limited, in the middle of downtown Chicago, the crew had to park elsewhere and lug all the tools to the pit road.

Bradley Carson is one of three mechanics on the Cope team, which is the smallest as well as one of the newest in the series, not that it has limited XFinity driver Thomas Annunziata, who qualified in the middle of the pack for the Chicago Street Race.

Saturday afternoon, as the temperature climbed into the mid-80s, an oil-caked Carson was sitting on a tire in the shade of his team’s pit box.

“I’m exhausted,” he said.

He had every right to be. Carson, 62, who lives in Morrisville, North Carolina, and the two other mechanics on the team, rebuild Annunziata’s car nearly every week and after a racing weekend, it requires a complete renewal. For Carson, a 19-hour day, four times a week, is nothing unusual.

He admitted that the job takes a lot. But he wouldn’t give it up.

“People are doing this because they want to do this,” Carson said.

He got into motorsports as a 16-year-old not-always-legal drag racer in Los Angeles. Carson fell in love with “the thrill” of being around cars and stuck with it.

“You build something and it comes to life,” he said. “It’s a calling, in a sense … something that drives inside of you.”

Originally Published: July 6, 2025 at 2:38 PM CDT

CHICAGO (AP) — 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.

There are mixed feelings ahead of Sunday’s race about whether it will be the final NASCAR event in Chicago, and whether drivers want to see it remain on the schedule.

Denny Hamlin has no such hesitation.

“I personally would like to see them do everything they can to keep it here,” Hamlin said. “I’d like to see the city rally behind this race. I could just tell you that non-racing fans at the hotel I’m staying at are talking about the race. I think that it’s certainly got some sort of economic impact to the city itself. We’re certainly exposing some new fans to this. I think it’s very important. I think you try everything you can to get this thing back here in Chicago, because I believe it is an important place for us.”

NASCAR brought $109 million in economic impact to Chicago during the 2023 inaugural event. The number rose to $128 million last year. As for the attendance of new race fans, Julie Giese, president of the Chicago street course, said it was 80 percent the first year and close to 70percent in 2024.

Sunday is the last race in a three-year contract between NASCAR and the city of Chicago. However, there are option years in the contract.

“Chicagoland (Speedway) is not a substitute for this race,” Hamlin said of the dormant intermediate oval in Joliet, Illinois. “I’d like to see us run both. I don’t know where you go next, not really sure. Wild thought is, what about a street oval?

“All you need is just flat pavement to make a race track. We run a flat Clash, right? It’s at a flat track and we kind of make it work. I get it, though. There are so many things to put on a race so I wouldn’t know. But there’s a lot of hospitality and stuff around this track that you need miles to expand into. But I’m not sure the right place, I just know that it seems like it works here.”

Chicagoland has recently become a more vocal wish list item for some drivers and fans, although NASCAR has not publicly acknowledged its return being on their radar. But given that the Next Gen car performs reasonably well on intermediate racetracks, some would like to see it back on the calendar. NASCAR last competed there in 2019.

San Diego is the biggest rumor at the moment. The Athletic has reported NASCAR is working on a deal, but RACER is unaware of one having been finalized to this point.

The question then becomes: Would a Chicago street course race and a San Diego event exist on the same schedule? Or, is San Diego next in line to try and replicate what NASCAR did in Chicago?

“Until we know the alternative, I don’t know whether they’re ones better or worse than this,” Hamlin said. “I just feel like this is a bigger event than some of the ovals that we go through, simply because of the atmosphere of where it’s at. The exposure to new fans that are here casually in the city. I can only speak from my experiences in the casual people that for instance, I go shopping yesterday. I go to all these different stores, ‘What are you in town for? Oh yeah, there’s a race. We were talking about going to that. We didn’t go last year because the rain, but we’re thinking about going.’

“You want these are younger people that they’re not going to travel to Chicagoland to go to a race. You have to have it right here where they can walk to it. I don’t know if anyone shares the same sentiment I do, but I don’t run the series, I don’t make the decisions. But it just seems like from my standpoint, there’s more excitement around the venue itself than what a normal NASCAR race venue has.”

Shane van Gisbergen is the king of the Chicago Street Race.

In the third edition of the NASCAR Cup Series event through the downtown Windy City course, SVG reigned for the second time. He took the lead with 16 laps to go on July 6, streaking past Chase Briscoe seconds before a caution flag came out. Van Gisbergen held on after the green flag returned.

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He also won the first Chicago Street Race, which was his NASCAR debut, in 2023. Alex Bowman claimed it in 2024.

Ty Gibbs, Tyler Reddick, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch rounded out the top five Sunday.

Let’s check out the results.

NASCAR standings: Results from Cup Series race in Chicago today

1. Shane van Gisbergen, No. 88

15. John Hunter Nemechek, No. 42

31. Ricky Stenhouse Jr., No. 47

(This story was updated to add more information.)

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: NASCAR today: Results, winner of Chicago Street Race

CHICAGO (AP) — 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.

Shane van Gisbergen does a victory burnout after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at the Grant Park 165, Sunday, July 6, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

Photo:

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.

___

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

NASCAR race results from the Chicago Street Race

NASCAR Cup Series drivers are on the grid in Downtown Chicago, Illinois. The Chicago Street Course is set to host the Grant Park 165.

View Chicago results for the NASCAR Cup Series below.

Chicago Menu
Xfinity: Prac/Qual | Race
Cup: Prac/Qual | Race

Chicago TV Schedule

William Byron is suffering from a clutch issue ahead of the green flag. He’s already starting in the back of the field after a crash yesterday.

Shane van Gisbergen and Michael McDowell set the front row. 75 laps of street racing are up next…

Chicago
Stage 1 – Report

Laps: 20 (1-20 / 75)

Green flag, they run side by side for the lead into turn one. McDowell brakes later and clears him for the lead. Shane van Gisbergen crosses under him off the corner but McDowell holds the lead.

Lap 3, Carson Hocevar slams the wall and breaks the suspension. Hocevar spins across the track and we have a traffic jam. Brad Keselowski, Daniel Suarez, AJ Allmendinger, Austin Dillon, Will Brown, Todd Gilliland and Riley Herbst are collected. The red flag is out.

Chris Buescher heads to the pit lane with a mechanical issue. The hood is up as the team attempts a fix.

Green, McDowell gets the jump and he’s clear before turn one.

Lap 13, Shane van Gisbergen is all over the bumper of McDowell in the battle for the lead.

Lap 14, Alex Bowman is around under braking, no caution.

2 to go in stage one, Shane van Gisbergen heads for the pit lane from 2nd.

Penalty: Christopher Bell has been caught speeding on the pit lane.

Michael McDowell stays out and he wins stage one in Chicago!

Chicago Results (Stage 1) : 1. Michael McDowell; 2. Kyle Busch; 3. Tyler Reddick; 4. Chase Briscoe; 5. Ryan Preece; 6. Ross Chastain; 7. John Hunter Nemechek; 8. Zane Smith; 9. Austin Hill; 10. Noah Gragson

Chicago
Stage 2 – Report

Laps: 25 (21-45 / 75)

Michael stays out with several others. Shane van Gisbergen restarts 9th with fresh tires.

Green flag on stage two, McDowell clears Busch at the launch.

Lap 28, Shane van Gisbergen outbrakes Chase Briscoe and he takes 5th away. He’s climbing to the front.

Lap 31, Josh Berry spins with help from Erik Jones and the caution is out. Chase Briscoe and Tyler Reddick were on the pit lane as the caution came out.

Michael McDowell heads to the pit lane. He hands the lead to Shane van Gisbergen. McDowell has a struck throttle and the crew has lifted the hood to try and make repairs.

Green, Shane van Gisbergen leads AJ Allmendinger into turn one. McDowell heads to the garage area.

Lap 34, Kyle Busch is around under braking, no caution.

6 to go in stage two, Katherine Legge is around in turn one and she slams the tire barrier, no caution.

3 to go in stage two, Shane van Gisbergen and most of the leaders head for the pit lane. Allmendinger is handed the lead.

2 to go, AJ Allmendinger heads to the pits from the lead.

Ryan Blaney stays out and he wins stage two in Chicago!

Chicago Results (Stage 2) : 1. Ryan Blaney; 2. Chase Briscoe; 3. Tyler Reddick; 4. Alex Bowman; 5. Bubba Wallace; 6. Denny Hamlin; 7. Chase Elliott; 8. John Hunter Nemechek; 9. Erik Jones; 10. Christopher Bell

Chicago
Stage 3 – Report

Laps: 30 (46-75 / 75)

Blaney and others head to the pit lane. Chase Briscoe cycles to the race lead. Shane van Gisbergen restarts 8th with fresher tires than all the cars ahead.

Green flag on stage three, Briscoe clears Reddick at the jump.

Lap 50, rain is on the way.

24 to go, Shane van Gisbergen takes 3rd away from Hamlin. He’s 3 seconds behind the leader.

19 to go, Shane van Gisbergen dives inside of Reddick. Van Gisbergen takes 2nd away. Briscoe leads by three car lengths.

16 to go

16 to go, Shane Van Gisbergen has a run and he looks inside into turn three. Shane van Gisbergen to the lead! And the caution is out due to a medical emergency on the infield.

Shane van Gisbergen stays out. Reddick heads for the pit lane with just a few others.

Green, Shane Van Gisbergen leads Ty Gibbs into turn one. Austin Cindric completely missed the braking zone and he puts Ross Chastain is in the tire barrier but he keeps rolling. Joey Logano and Ricky Stenhouse Jr find the turn two tire barrier.

12 to go, Cindric is stalled, caution.

Green, van Gisbergen and Gibbs rub fenders at the launch. Shane van Gisbergen holds the lead into turn one.

9 to go, Chase Briscoe bangs wheels and he picks up a flat tire in turn twelve! No caution as Briscoe will limp around for a full lap.

6 to go, Bubba Wallace and Alex Bowman are banging bumpers for 7th. They are competing in the In-Season Challenge. Wallace is in the wall, no caution!

5 to go, Bell is around, no caution.

4 to go, Reddick has climbed to 4th. He’s 4 seconds behind the leader with much fresher tires.

2 to go, Cody Ware is buried in the tire barrier. No caution.

1 to go, the caution is out. Shane van Gisbergen wins the Chicago Street Race!

Chicago Street Course
Race Results
July 6, 2025
NASCAR Cup Series

Pos | Driver

1. Shane van Gisbergen

2. Ty Gibbs

3. Tyler Reddick

4. Denny Hamlin

5. Kyle Busch

6. AJ Allmendinger

7. Ryan Preece

8. Alex Bowman

9. Austin Hill

10. Ross Chastain

11. Joey Logano

12. Ryan Blaney

13. Kyle Larson

14. Zane Smith

15. John Hunter Nemechek

16. Chase Elliott

17. Riley Herbst

18. Chris Buescher

19. Katherine Legge

20. Ty Dillon

21. Josh Bilicki

22. Christopher Bell

23. Justin Haley

24. Chase Briscoe

25. Cody Ware

26. Erik Jones

27. Austin Cindric

28. Bubba Wallace

29. Daniel Suarez

30. Noah Gragson

31. Ricky Stenhouse Jr

32. Michael McDowell

33. Cole Custer

34. Josh Berry

35. Carson Hocevar

36. Austin Dillon

37. Brad Keselowski

38. Todd Gilliland

39. Will Brown

40. William Byron

NASCAR Cup Series
Point Standings

Pos | Driver | Wins | Points

1. Kyle Larson
3 Wins

2. Denny Hamlin
3 Wins

3. Christopher Bell
3 Wins

4. Shane van Gisbergen
2 Wins

5. William Byron
1 Win

6. Ryan Blaney
1 Win

7. Austin Cindric
1 Win

8. Joey Logano
1 Win

9. Chase Briscoe
1 Win

10. Josh Berry
1 Win

11. Chase Elliott
1 Win

12. Ross Chastain
1 Win

13. Tyler Reddick
+142

14. Alex Bowman
+39

15. Chris Buescher
+35

16. Bubba Wallace
+3

— Playoff Cutline —

17. Ryan Preece
-3

18. AJ Allmendinger
-44

19. Kyle Busch
-47

20. Erik Jones
-51

In-Season Challenge
Bracket (Chicago Results)

Bracket winners in bold

Ty Dillon (Seed 32)
vs
Brad Keselowski (Seed 17)

Alex Bowman (Seed 8)
vs
Bubba Wallace (Seed 9)

John Hunter Nemechek (Seed 12)
vs
Chase Elliott (Seed 5)

Erik Jones (Seed 20)
vs
Ricky Stenhouse Jr (Seed 28)

Noah Gragson (Seed 31)
vs
Ryan Preece (Seed 15)

Carson Hocevar (Seed 26)
vs
Tyler Reddick (Seed 23)

AJ Allmendinger (Seed 22)
vs
Ty Gibbs (Seed 6)

Zane Smith (Seed 14)
vs
Chris Buescher (Seed 3)

Chicago Street Race
Video Highlights

Links

NASCAR Chicago | NASCAR