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

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.

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