The Cubs have been playing baseball in Chicago for well over a century and still don’t have a perfect game to their name. Shane van Gisbergen needed just two days to pull one off.
The Kiwi street course ace completed the rare Chicago sweep Sunday, winning the NASCAR Cup Series Grant Park 165 after grabbing the pole—and winning Saturday’s Xfinity race for good measure.
“Yeah, I love this place,” he said. “What an amazing weekend for me. Lucky guy to drive some great cars. I thank Trackhouse, WeatherTech Chevy and all these guys and girls here, what an amazing weekend.”
Two years after winning his Cup debut on these streets—and falling short here last season—van Gisbergen reminded everyone that in the concrete canyons of Chicago, he’s still the man to beat. Though he admitted it was a bit tougher than in the past.
“It was very hot this weekend,” he said. “The track was very slick and the times were a lot slower and the margin for error was very tiny. Just had to get it right, and I’m wrapped.”
Michael McDowell wasted no time stealing the spotlight—and the top spot—from polesitter van Gisbergen, muscling his way to the lead before most of the field had even exhaled. But in true street course fashion, it didn’t take long for the whole thing to descend into chaos.
First came the bad news for William Byron. The regular season points leader had clutch problems before the green flag even dropped, telling his crew he had “major clutch slipping” as he went through the gears on the pace laps. His confidence wasn’t exactly overflowing either. “I don’t know what to do here. I’m not sure how this is going to go,” he radioed in—a fair assessment, as it turned out.
By Lap 2, Byron slowed to a near stop and coasted to pit road. Moments later, he was in the garage, his miserable Chicago weekend wrapped up early. It had started with a crash in Saturday’s practice and ended with his third finish of 27th or worse in the last four races. At this rate, the only thing slipping worse than his clutch might be his momentum heading into the summer stretch.
As Byron packed it in, the rest of the field kept at it—until the race took another predictably ridiculous turn.
Coming out of Turn 11, Carson Hocevar pinballed off both the outside and inside walls like a rental scooter on Michigan Avenue, then promptly spun across the straightaway, blocking much of the track. Brad Keselowski had nowhere to go, followed by Todd Gilliland, Austin Dillon, Will Brown, and Riley Herbst piling in for good measure. It looked less like a NASCAR race and more like rush hour on Lower Wacker Drive.
With the track now blocked and the barriers looking about as sturdy as a wet napkin, NASCAR had no choice but to throw the red flag, grinding the field to a halt for nearly 15 minutes while they patched things back together.
When racing resumed, McDowell picked up right where he left off, calmly riding the top spot to the end of Stage 1 and delivering the first-ever stage win in the history of Spire Motorsports—a sentence nobody had on their Chicago bingo card.
McDowell stayed out front when Stage 2 fired off, but lurking just behind was van Gisbergen. The Kiwi pitted just before the lane closed at the end of Stage 1, and by the early laps of Stage 2, he was back inside the top five—and looking like the fastest thing on four wheels. The reigning street course maestro wasn’t done yet.
The carnage continued on Lap 30 when Erik Jones punted Josh Berry out of Turn 7, sending him spinning into the inside wall. For reasons known only to the racing gods—and maybe Race Control—NASCAR hesitated nearly a full lap before throwing the caution. Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe, both running inside the top 10, spotted the delay and dove for pit road just as the caution finally came out. It was a bit of cheeky strategy that looked like it might pay off handsomely.
But up front, Michael McDowell’s fairy tale unraveled faster than a Chicago Bears playoff run. His shot at a win—and Spire’s shot at rewriting history—evaporated when he reported a stuck throttle. He was the only car to pit under caution as his crew scrambled to sort it, but the problem wouldn’t go away. Moments later, they pushed his Chevrolet to the DVP area for repairs, hopes of victory left sitting somewhere in Turn 7 next to Josh Berry’s tire marks. Despite leading the most laps—31—McDowell would end the day 32nd, 53 laps down.
When the green flag flew again on Lap 33, the natural order of street course racing was restored—Shane van Gisbergen back where most people expected him, leading the way over A.J. Allmendinger. It was the Kiwi versus the Dinger, both road course assassins, both well aware that in Chicago, chaos is never more than a corner away.
As he did at the end of Stage 1, van Gisbergen played it smart, ducking into the pits from the lead just before they closed on Lap 41. That handed the top spot to Allmendinger, who responded a lap later by diving in himself—just as the pits were slamming shut behind him. Unfortunately for the Dinger, a sluggish stop didn’t exactly help his cause.
Up front, Ryan Blaney saw an opportunity and grabbed it with both hands. Needing playoff points more than another race win, Blaney stayed out and cruised to the Stage 2 victory, with fellow race winner Chase Briscoe in tow. It was strategy, survival, and just the right sprinkle of Chicago street circuit chaos—a recipe guaranteed to shuffle the order before the final run to glory.
Briscoe became little more than a placeholder for the top spot because by Lap 57, van Gisbergen had marched forward with the inevitability of Chicago traffic cameras and was stalking him for the lead.
Just as van Gisbergen snatched the point, chaos came calling yet again. Caution number five flew on Lap 60—not for a car in the wall, but for something arguably more serious: an injured spectator and an ambulance that needed to cross the track. Only in NASCAR can you dominate a race and still have to slow down for a medical van cutting across your office.
The green came back out on Lap 62 with 13 to go, but the restart was short-lived. Austin Cindric had an issue and pulled to a stop, stacking the field yet again and pushing everyone’s patience to the limit.
And if the delays weren’t enough to raise heart rates, Mother Nature decided to pile on. A fog bank began creeping in behind the Chicago skyline like something out of a Stephen King novel, the tension growing thicker with every lap.
Finally, the green flew with nine to go. SVG was the target. Ty Gibbs was second, being coached like an understudy waiting for his big Broadway moment. But this wasn’t theater—it was more like a UFC fight, the closing laps turning into a slugfest behind van Gisbergen as the field jostled, shoved, and swung for position.
Tyler Reddick, having pitted under the fifth caution while the leaders stayed out, was armed with fresher tires and a full tank of ambition. He charged through the field and climbed to third with three to go, looking poised to ruin the Kiwi’s Chicago encore. But just like his late-race heroics last year here, Reddick couldn’t quite seal the deal.
The final act of chaos came with perfect timing—Cody Ware sliding into the tire barrier in Turn 6 just as van Gisbergen took the white flag. NASCAR threw the caution after a slight delay, freezing the field and dashing any hopes of a dramatic last-lap shootout. It had van Gisbergen a bit worried.
“Yeah, I shat myself,” he said laughing. “When I came around the corner, he mustn’t have been long in the fence, and there was a whole bunch of smoke. And you just panic because it’s different to the lap before. I think, oh, shit, what’s happened there? As soon as you got to the line, you were fine. But that four seconds to the line, I was in full panic mode, trying to get to the line as quick as I could.
But in truth, the drama had been over for a while. The only real hero of the weekend—and the day—was Shane van Gisbergen. Chicago, it seems, is still his playground.
Though Gibbs wished there had been a caution flag before the white giving him at least a shot.
“Yeah, I would have been all for that 100 percent, but I think the 51 was like underneath the K-rail over there,” Gibbs said. “So I don’t know. That would have been awesome, though.”
Behind Gibbs, Reddick, disappointed once more, was third, Denny Hamlin—who started from the rear with a fresh engine—was fourth, and Kyle Busch, who was as high as second at one point but overcame a spin and pit road penalty, completed the top five.
“Yeah, each year we’ve been here, the situation has kind of been the same,” Reddick said. “We’ve had some sort of tire advantage all three years and just come up a little bit short. The first year obviously we came up big short because I just drove it in the tire barrier into 6.
“But this time around, the last five, six laps were really good. We just on that second to last restart, the 8 got — I think it was the 8. A couple cars got turned around and we were in the wrong lane and had to check up quite a bit. “
A.J. Allmendinger, Ryan Preece, Alex Bowman, Austin Hill, and Ross Chastain rounded out the top 10.
The Kiwi now becomes just the second driver (but the first rookie) to sweep both NASCAR national series races and both poles on a single weekend, a feat last seen nearly a decade ago when Kyle Busch dominated Indianapolis in 2016.
For van Gisbergen, it was a statement—and a reminder—that when it comes to street course racing, he’s in a league of his own.
The Cubs are still chasing their first perfect game. Shane van Gisbergen now has two. And he is firmly in NASCAR’s Playoffs, somewhere he could have only dreamed about just four weeks ago.
“How good is that,” van Gisbergen said with a smile. “Unreal. We really come together as a team, got a lot better. Ross got a win, too, so brilliant. Thank you to everyone.”
Next up is another road course—Sonoma Raceway—where Kyle Larson is the defending winner. But based on what van Gisbergen keeps doing on these circuits, Larson might want to start planning his California victory lane speech very carefully.
RACE RESULTS
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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