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Federal judges rule in favor of NASCAR in lawsuit filed by Jordan-owned 23XI and Front Row

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — A three-judge federal appellate panel ruled Thursday in favor of NASCAR in the antitrust lawsuit filed by two teams, one owned by Michael Jordan, and vacated an injunction that required 23XI and Front Row be recognized as chartered teams as their case snakes through the legal system. Both race teams sued […]

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — A three-judge federal appellate panel ruled Thursday in favor of NASCAR in the antitrust lawsuit filed by two teams, one owned by Michael Jordan, and vacated an injunction that required 23XI and Front Row be recognized as chartered teams as their case snakes through the legal system.

Both race teams sued NASCAR late last year after refusing to sign new agreements on charter renewals. The charter system is similar to franchises in other sports, but the charters are revocable by NASCAR and have expiration dates. 23XI, which is owned by Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, allied with Front Row in suing NASCAR after 13 other organizations signed the renewals last September and those two organization refused.

“We are disappointed by today’s ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and are reviewing the decision to determine our next steps,” said Jeffery Kessler, attorney for 23XI and Front Row. “This ruling is based on a very narrow consideration of whether a release of claims in the charter agreements is anti-competitive and does not impact our chances of winning at trial scheduled for Dec. 1.

“We remain confident in our case and committed to racing for the entirety of this season as we continue our fight to create a fair and just economic system for stock car racing that is free of anticompetitive, monopolistic conduct.”

The two teams sued and asked for a temporary injunction that would recognize them as chartered teams for this season. The antitrust case isn’t scheduled to be heard until December.

The teams said they needed the injunction because the current charter agreement prohibits them from suing NASCAR. 23XI also argued it would be harmed because Tyler Reddick’s contract would have made him a free agent if the team could not guarantee him a charter-protected car.

The original judge ruled that NASCAR’s charter agreement likely violated antitrust law in granting the injunction. But when they heard arguments last month, the three judges at the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, indicated they were skeptical of that decision.

The judges said in Thursday’s ruling they were not aware of any case that supports the lower court’s theory of antitrust law, so they vacated the injunction.

“In short, because we have found no support for the proposition that a business entity or person violates the antitrust laws by requiring a prospective participant to give a release for past conduct as a condition for doing business, we cannot conclude that the plaintiffs made a clear showing that they were likely to succeed on the merits of that theory,” the court said. “And without satisfaction of the likelihood-of-success element, the plaintiffs were not entitled to a preliminary injunction.”

The teams have 14 days to appeal to the full court. The injunction also has no bearings on the merits of the case, and the earliest NASCAR can treat the teams as unchartered — a charter guarantees their organizations a starting spot each week and prize money — is one week after the deadline to appeal, provided there is no pending appeal.

NASCAR has not said what it would do with the six charters held by the two organizations if they are returned to the sanctioning body. There are only 36 chartered cars for a 40-car field. If the teams do not appeal, the six entries would have to compete as “open” cars — which means they’d have to qualify on speed each week to make the race and they would receive a fraction of the money.

It’s not clear what would happen to Reddick’s contract. He goes to Michigan this weekend ranked sixth in the Cup Series standings. Both organizations are still seeking a win this season — Hamlin’s three victories are with Joe Gibbs Racing, the team he drives for.

Reddick is last year’s regular-season champion and competed for the Cup title last November.

___

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.



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Shane van Gisbergen wins in Chicago once again, completing NASCAR weekend sweep – Orlando Sentinel

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 […]

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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.”

Shane Van Gisbergen (88) spins out while celebrating his win in the NASCAR Cup Series Grant Park 165 on July 6, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)
Shane van Gisbergen (88) spins out while celebrating his win in the NASCAR Cup Series Grant Park 165 on July 6, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)

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.

Rains hold off until after race but outcome is the same as Shane van Gisbergen wins again

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.

Photos: 2025 NASCAR Chicago Street Race

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.”

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.

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Behind the scenes, crews keep race running smoothly

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 […]

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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.

A crew member releases tire air for Katherine Legge (78)'s team during the NASCAR Xfinity Series The Loop 110 on July 5, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)
A crew member releases tire air for Katherine Legge (78)’s team during the NASCAR Xfinity Series The Loop 110 on July 5, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)
A crew member from Nick Sanchez (48)'s team works underneath the car before the NASCAR Xfinity Series The Loop 110 on Saturday, July 5, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)
A crew member from Nick Sanchez (48)’s team works underneath the car before the NASCAR Xfinity Series The Loop 110 on Saturday, July 5, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)

“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.

Bayshore Mortgage's Thomas Annunziata, 70, in the pit stop in Grant Park during the NASCAR Xfinity Series The Loop 110 ahead of the NASCAR Cup Series on July 5, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)
Bayshore Mortgage’s Thomas Annunziata, 70, in the pit stop in Grant Park during the NASCAR Xfinity Series The Loop 110 ahead of the NASCAR Cup Series on July 5, 2025. (Audrey Richardson/Chicago Tribune)

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.”

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Van Gisbergen wins in Chicago once again, completing a NASCAR weekend sweep

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 […]

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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.



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Hamlin keen to see Chicago street race remain on NASCAR schedule

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 […]

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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.”



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NASCAR results: Full finishing order of Chicago Street Race

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 […]

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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

  2. John Hunter Nemechek, No. 42

  3. 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



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Van Gisbergen wins in Chicago once again, completing a NASCAR weekend sweep

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 […]

Published

on


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.

___

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.



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