In the closing laps of the NASCAR Cup race at Chicago, a tense battle unfolded at the backend of the top ten. Alex Bowman and Bubba Wallace were trading paint and slamming fenders in a dramatic battle for position.

However, it wasn’t just a top ten on the line in this situation. Bowman and Wallace were also matched up in Round 2 of NASCAR’s new in-season challenge, and the driver who finished higher would advance into the next round. The prize for winning this tournament is $1 million, equal to a victory in the All-Star Race.

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As the two drivers battled, there was a lot of contact that ended with Wallace spinning off the nose of Bowman. While the Hendrick Motorsports driver went on to finish eighth, Wallace ended the day in 28th as he was eliminated from the in-season challenge.

The two drivers shared a cordial conversation after the race as they talked through what happened on the track.

“I didn’t really expect it when I passed him [Wallace] and we got into (Turn) 12 and he just shipped me, and then he ran me into the fence in (Turn) 1, and ran us into the fence off of (Turn) 2,” said Bowman after the race.

“He’s just not clear. I don’t have anywhere to go. We’re going straight and we just got hooked together and he ends up crashing. I didn’t really feel like it was necessary.”

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The impact of the $1 million challenge

Bowman later added: “I guess the in-season tournament is more important than I expected.”

In the end, Bowman is now one of the final eight drivers in a tournament that began with 32, and the last representative for Hendrick Motorsports. Bowman noted that the challenge wasn’t even on his mind at the time, and wondered if that’s what caused Wallace to race him as hard as he did.

“I don’t know if that’s worth driving into the corner and clearing the guy out and then driving him into the fence and doing all the things that happened there,” concluded Bowman.

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By Noah Poser, Staff Writer

Coming into the weekend, Ty Gibbs was one of just three drivers to have finished inside the top 10 in both NASCAR Cup Series races at the Chicago Street Course.

After Sunday’s race concluded with Gibbs finishing runner-up to race winner Shane van Gisbergen, he remains just one of now two drivers (along with Kyle Busch) to have done so in each of the first three editions of the race.

The second-place finish matches his best finish at NASCAR’s highest level, a result he had previously achieved at Darlington last spring.

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

Gibbs started ninth and ran well for much of the day, but the team opted to prioritize track position over stage points throughout the early portions of the race to allow him be near the front for the final stage.

The plan worked to near-perfection as Gibbs lined up alongside van Gisbergen on the front row for what ultimately wound up being the race’s final restart with nine laps to go, giving him his best chance at snatching the win away from the Trackhouse Racing driver.

But it wasn’t meant to be for Gibbs, who experienced firsthand the perils of being stuck in the outside lane on a restart at the Chicago Street Course.

“Right in that last corner, the dude on the outside gets shafted every single time,” Gibbs said. “If you watch every one of them, the inside guy wins almost every time and he just got a good enough gap and had a good restart. I had a little bit of rear tire degradation and it didn’t really help me in my launch off the corner, so he just got a good gap and got away from me.”

Gibbs said there wasn’t a whole lot he could have done differently to change the outcome.

“The outside is the less preferred lane on the racetrack and especially on the starts because there’s just not as much grip,” Gibbs said. “Maybe if he had a hiccup and slid his right front tire, maybe I could have stayed on the outside of him.”

In the end, van Gisbergen drove away from Gibbs after the restart, leaving the Joe Gibbs Racing driver to fend off a hard-charging Tyler Reddick after Reddick had stormed back through the field following a late pit stop for fresh tires.

When the yellow flag waved on the final lap for Cody Ware being stuck in the turn six tire barrier, freezing the field in their respective running positions, Gibbs’ defense of second place proved to be a success, allowing him to better the third-place finish he had in Chicago last year after having lead the most laps.

The runner-up result marks the third top five finish of the season for Gibbs, who jumps five spots in the standings, from 24th to 19th. He’s 66 points back of Bubba Wallace for the final playoff spot with seven races remaining in the regular season.

Despite the substantial gains made in the points, Gibbs wishes the caution had come out before the white flag as opposed to just after, allowing him one more shot to fight for the win.

“I would have been all for that (caution),” Gibbs said. “100%. But I think the No. 51 was underneath the (barrier) over there, so I don’t know. It would’ve been awesome though.

“It would have worked in my favor.”

The Chicago Street Course was added to the NASCAR Cup Series schedule in 2023, when it hosted the sport’s first-ever street course race.

To this day, the 12-turn, 2.2-mile (3.541-kilometer) temporary street course in Chicago, Illinois is the one and only street circuit on the 36-race Cup Series calendar, though it is one of six non-oval races on the calendar (one of five during the 26-race regular season).

Sunday’s 75-lap Grant Park 165 is also the second of five races of NASCAR’s inaugural in-season tournament. Atlanta Motor Speedway got things started last Saturday night, and the 32-driver bracket was narrowed down to 16 following Chase Elliott’s victory.

Saturday’s two-group qualifying session determined the full starting lineup for Sunday’s race. Trackhouse Racing’s Shane van Gisbergen took the pole position, and Spire Motorsports’ Michael McDowell started beside him on the front row. With 41 drivers attempting to qualify and only 40 spots available, 23XI Racing’s Corey Heim was left on the outside looking in after a qualifying incident.

A full starting lineup can be found here.

Follow along with our live Grant Park 165 updates from Chicago.

NASCAR at Chicago: Full Stage 1 results

1st – Michael McDowell, No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet

2nd – Kyle Busch, No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet

3rd – Tyler Reddick, No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota

4th – Chase Briscoe, No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

5th – Ryan Preece, No. 60 RFK Racing Ford

6th – Ross Chastain, No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet

7th – John Hunter Nemechek, No. 42 Legacy Motor Club Toyota

8th – Zane Smith, No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford

9th – Austin Hill, No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet

10th – Noah Gragson, No. 4 Front Row Motorsports Ford

NASCAR at Chicago: Full Stage 2 results

1st – Ryan Blaney, No. 12 Team Penske Ford

2nd – Chase Briscoe, No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

3rd – Tyler Reddick, No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota

4th – Alex Bowman, No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

5th – Bubba Wallace, No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota

6th – Denny Hamlin, No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

7th – Chase Elliott, No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

8th – John Hunter Nemechek, No. 42 Legacy Motor Club Toyota

9th – Erik Jones, No. 43 Legacy Motor Club Toyota

10th – Christopher Bell, No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

NASCAR at Chicago: Full Grant Park 165 results

1st – Shane van Gisbergen, No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet

2nd – Ty Gibbs, No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

3rd – Tyler Reddick, No. 45 23XI Racing Toyota

4th – Denny Hamlin, No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

5th – Kyle Busch, No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet

6th – A.J. Allmendinger, No. 16 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet

7th – Ryan Preece, No. 60 RFK Racing Ford

8th – Alex Bowman, No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

9th – Austin Hill, No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet

10th – Ross Chastain, No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet

11th – Joey Logano, No. 22 Team Penske Ford

12th – Ryan Blaney, No. 12 Team Penske Ford

13th – Kyle Larson, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

14th – Zane Smith, No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford

15th – John Hunter Nemechek, No. 42 Legacy Motor Club Toyota

16th – Chase Elliott, No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

17th – Riley Herbst, No. 35 23XI Racing Toyota

18th – Chris Buescher, No. 17 RFK Racing Ford

19th – Katherine Legge, No. 78 Live Fast Motorsports Chevrolet

20th – Ty Dillon, No. 10 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet

21st – Josh Bilicki, No. 66 Garage 66 Ford

22nd – Justin Haley, No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet

23rd – Chase Briscoe, No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

24th – Christopher Bell, No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota

25th – Erik Jones, No. 43 Legacy Motor Club Toyota

26th – Cody Ware, No. 51 Rick Ware Racing Ford

27th – Austin Cindric, No. 2 Team Penske Ford

28th – Bubba Wallace, No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota

29th – Daniel Suarez, No. 99 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet

30th – Noah Gragson, No. 4 Front Row Motorsports Ford

31st – Ricky Stenhouse Jr., No. 47 Hyak Motorsports Chevrolet

32nd – Michael McDowell, No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet

33rd – Cole Custer, No. 41 Haas Factory Team Ford

34th – Josh Berry, No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford

35th – Carson Hocevar, No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet

36th – Austin Dillon, No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet

37th – Brad Keselowski, No. 6 RFK Racing Ford

38th – Todd Gilliland, No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford

39th – Will Brown, No. 13 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet

40th – William Byron, No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet

CHICAGO (WLS) — Chicago’s third annual NASCAR Street Race hit the gas Sunday, charging full speed into a second day.

Fans were back in and around Grant Park for another high-octane day of professional racing.

As Sunday’s events ended, some of the cleanup was already underway here as Chicagoans got ready for the city to reopen some closed downtown streets over the next few days.

And as year three of the NASCAR event in Chicago come to a close, everyone ABC7 talked to thought it was a success.

ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watch

The NASCAR Cup Series – Grant Park 165 – took off Sunday afternoon with Chicago Bulls legend Derrick Rose as the grand marshal.

Drivers took on 75 laps of a 2.2 mile, 12 turn race track that takes them through Grant Park and along DuSable Lakeshore Drive with the city skyline setting the stage for unforgettable races.

New Zealand’s Shane van Gisbergen swept the weekend after winning on Sunday.

The Xfinity Series race was the main event on Saturday, and they got some beautiful weather. The New Zealand native also took home the win Saturday. It was van Gisbergen’s second straight time finishing first in Chicago for the Xfinity Series.

“It’s loud, it’s fast and I’m here for it,” Chicago resident Kashif Charania said.

Festivities have also been in full force across NASCAR village during the weekend.

“It’s awesome. I mean I’m not from here, so I don’t have to deal with the traffic on a regular basis, but it’s been very fun and very cool to be here,” said Sophia Winkelblech, who was visiting from Michigan.

Fans poured into Grant Park from across the city and around the country on Saturday.

“You get to go view it from anyway you want,” said George Peters, who was visiting from St. Louis. There’s so much versatility seeing different zone of the race track, and it’s just something you’ll never see anywhere else.”

RELATED: Street closures for Chicago NASCAR race underway, construction schedule shortened: officials

“I think it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, to see the city right behind the track is like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Elmwood Park residentLarson Wood said.

This now marks an end to the final year of the NASCAR contract in Chicago, but there are options included to possibly extend the race to 2026 and 2027.

After seeing changes in the traffic impacts this year, some Chicago residents said they’d love to see NASCAR return.

“It’s worth it, absolutely,” Charania said. “I love being in Chicago for all of these tips of events… just the culture… everything is great.”

The northbound lanes of Dusable Lake Shore Drive are expected to reopen at 6 a.m. Monday.

As NASCAR ripped through Chicago’s Grant Park on Sunday, a high-speed, an all-electric challenger entered the race.

“There’s no engine in this car,” Chris Shigas with ABB said. “It has three electric motors in it and 1360 horsepower. That’s an impressive machine.”

NASCAR, along with electrical engineering company, ABB, Chevrolet and Ford, unveiled a first-of-its-kind electric vehicle showcase to fans at the Chicago Street Race.

READ MORE: 3rd NASCAR Chicago Street Race takes off in Grant Park, Shane van Gisbergen wins Xfinity Series race on Saturday

The three supercharged prototypes taking on the track were a Ford Mustang Mach-E NASCAR EV, an ABB-NASCAR EV and a Chevy Blazer EV-R NASCAR prototype.

“We’re looking at NASCAR tracks across the nation and seeing how we can help them run more sustainably and energy efficient,” Shigas said.

“It felt pretty much like a normal race car with the weight and everything for the most part,” driver Rajah Caruth said.

Caruth spent time behind the wheel of the Chevy Blazer EV-R. Caruth said the EVs handle just a bit differently than the traditional gas-powered race cars, but when it comes to the acceleration…

“It’s literally like Mario Kart, getting the star or bullet boost, putting a rocket on top of the wing. That’s how I would describe it,” he said.

The screech of the high-powered EVs reverberated throughout the park, taking on tight turns and open straightaways with the picturesque Chicago skyline setting the stage. ABC7 crews even had the chance to wave the checkered flag at the end of the run.

“This is two years in the process just from getting the car on the track to where we are today,” NASCAR engineer CJ Tobin said.

“We’re excited about the technology,” Tobin said. “We want to see what we can do as an organization with a different powertrain… We want to be in the driver’s seat knowing where we’re going, not in the passenger seat looking back like, ‘where are we now?'”

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.

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.

Originally Published: July 6, 2025 at 7:52 PM EDT

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