Shane van Gisbergen wins the NASCAR Chicago Street Race to complete a perfect weekend
The road course ace roared to the lead on Lake Shore Drive and ran away from the field in a nine-lap shootout, winning Sunday's third annual Grant Park 165, the NASCAR Cup Series' Chicago Street Race.
The Trackhouse Racing driver, who won Saturday's Xfinity Race and the Cup race's pole, got his number 88 Chevrolet past leader Chase Briscoe with 16 laps left and had a 2.5 second lead over Ty Gibbs before a caution on the final lap gave him his second win of 2025.
The victory was the Auckland, New Zealand native's third in 33 career starts and helped Chevrolet to sweep three victories in the streets of Chicago.
He started the weekend by winning the pole for the Sunday race. The 36-year-old Supercars champion then backed up his first career Cup victory in the Second City in 2023 by doing it again.
"What an amazing weekend for me," said van Gisbergen, who led 26 laps and dominated the series last month on Mexico City's road layout. "We made no mistakes, and there were some really fast cars."
Van Gisbergen said the weather was a problem.
"It was just so hot this weekend," he said. "The track was very slick, and the times were a lot slower. The margin for error was very tiny. Just had to get it right."
Chevrolet was first to the checkered flag for the third time in the past five races.
Gibbs posted a season-best finish with the runner-up showing in his black Toyota.
"I feel like I wasn't free enough to hit my points," the number 54 Joe Gibbs Racing driver said. "We had a good day overall just need to be faster."
Following Gibbs were Tyler Reddick, Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch.
Michael McDowell led a race-high 31 laps but developed a stuck throttle midway through the race and finished 32nd.
With the entire Hendrick Motorsports stable starting at the rear of the 40-car field due to failed qualifying runs or repairs, four drivers holding play-off spots had to work to move through the field.
Alex Bowman finished eighth, while Kyle Larson was 13th. Chase Elliott ended up 16th, and points leader William Byron came in last.
In what may have been NASCAR's final run in the Windy City's usually busy streets, race favourite van Gisbergen led the field from the pole position, but Row 1 starter McDowell snagged the lead in less than half a circuit.
Carson Hocevar caused the first caution on Lap 4 when he bounced off the apron of Turn 10 and smacked the outside wall, coming to rest as seven cars, including Austin Dillon and Brad Keselowski, piled into Hocevar's number 77 car as it sat sideways against the outer barrier.
While much of the field pitted, McDowell stayed on the 3.54 kilometre (2.2-mile) course, leading every circuit to beat Busch and Reddick for the top bonus points as Stage 1 ended at Lap 20.
Ryan Blaney put his number 12 Ford in position to claim 10 segment points as Stage 2 concluded on Lap 45. Briscoe, Reddick, Bowman and Bubba Wallace trailed the Team Penske driver.
Reuters
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ABC News
5 hours ago
- ABC News
Will Musk's new 'America Party' take down Trump?
Sydney Pead: After spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help put Donald Trump in the White House, Elon Musk is launching his own political party. Musk says his America Party will challenge the status quo that he believes is bankrupting the United States. Today, political scientist Geoff Kabaservice from the Niskanen Center on what the party could stand for and who might vote for it. I'm Sydney Pead, on Gadigal land in Sydney, this is ABC News Daily. Sydney Pead: Geoff, Elon Musk did a poll on his platform X and 65% voted yes to create the America Party. He says it's formed to give you back your freedom. So there you have it, Geoff, easy as that. Geoff Kabaservice: Yes, with Elon Musk, he only has to will it and it exists. So people who followed the Trump-Musk drama will know that they fell out rather violently a few weeks ago and were slinging insults at each other on social media. News report: The president, who reportedly plans to sell the red Tesla he bought in a show of support for Elon Musk, has now described his former first buddy as a man who's lost his mind. Geoff Kabaservice: But then Musk had actually been quiet for a bit, probably on the advice of his boards of directors. But then on the 4th of July, America's Independence Day, he came out with his proposal that there be a third party, which presumably he would fund with great generosity. And this would be a major change to the American political system. And the X voters voted and they said by a two to one margin, they wanted him to go forward. So he's vowed that he will. Sydney Pead: And this is a new direction for Musk's foray into politics. Back in May, he exited the Trump administration after spearheading the cost-cutting department of government efficiency, DOGE. The wheels did start to come off a little when Musk began to criticise Trump's spending plan, Trump's big, beautiful bill. Can you tell me about that? Geoff Kabaservice: Yes. Well, before it had that label, Musk had actually called the bill a disgusting abomination. And in fact, you know, it is quite a profligate spending bill for a Republican party that still likes to think of itself as the guardian of the fisk. It will add at least $3 trillion to the deficit. And this at a time, of course, when interest rates arereasonably high, and this actually will not have a good impact on the American economy or the situation for businesses. However, the budget bill is also notable in the sense that it's in some way a very un-Trumpian piece of legislation. It actually makes savage cuts to government spending programmes that actually do support quite a lot of voters in Trump's base, relatively poor, working class voters. So this actually has real potential to split the party. And maybe that's the subtext to Elon Musk's proposal to start a third party and also punish Republican legislators who voted for this bill. Sydney Pead: Yes. Well, there was plenty of shots fired between Trump and Musk over this bill. Even at one stage, Trump was musing on the possibility of deporting Elon Musk, which is extraordinary. Geoff Kabaservice: Yes, yes. I mean, Trump says a lot of things that perhaps he doesn't necessarily mean, but he certainly does have a bit of a handle from which to jerk Elon Musk around because Musk's companies get quite a lot of government subsidies and Trump has mused about taking those away. You know, something about the overall incoherence of Musk's political position, I think, is revealed in the fact that he is, after all, the head of Tesla. And most buyers of electric vehicles are actually Democrats. Trump's one big beautiful bill actually makes savage cuts to anything resembling green energy. So he actually has a very credible threat to do away with government subsidy of Musk's companies. Sydney Pead: Okay. So in the wake of this fallout, Elon Musk announces on X that he's going to start a new political party. Donald Trump is not happy about this. He says it's ridiculous and Musk has gone completely off the rails since departing the White House. Donald Trump, US President: I think it's ridiculous to start a third party. We have a tremendous success with the Republican party. The Democrats have lost their way, but it's always been a two party system. And I think starting a third party just adds to confusion. It really seems to have been developed for two parties. Third parties have never worked. So he can have fun with it. But I think it's ridiculous. Sydney Pead: Let's take a look now at the America party. Musk claims that the US currently has a uni-party system and that the Republicans and the Democrats are in essence the same. So what is his alternative? We know he wants to slash debt. What else would this party stand for? Geoff Kabaservice: So, you know, I think most Americans would find the idea that the Republicans and Democrats right now at this moment are the same to be bonkers. They're probably farther apart than they've been in decades. However, Musk is probably correct that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have much credibility when it comes to balancing budgets. I actually believe that we now spend more on the interest on the debt in any one given fiscal year than we do on all of our national defence spending. So it actually is a very serious problem and he's not wrong to want to address it. But the problem is, of course, that Musk is all over the map in some sense in terms of his own politics. He's alienated Democrats because of the DOGE actions that he undertook to to really attack and undermine government. And he also holds a lot of positions that Democrats don't like. He's actually a very strong supporter of the Second Amendment to bear arms, for example, which is less popular now than it's ever been, perhaps, in the Democratic Party. But on the other hand, his war with Trump has shown that he's alienated a large segment of MAGA's party as well. And they're not fiscal conservatives at heart, most of his populist supporters. So it's not quite clear what Elon's proposed constituency for this new American party might be. Sydney Pead: Well, just on that, what about his potential voters? He's very polarising. Do you think he attracts people who are attracted to his celebrity or is it his political ideology that's attractive? Geoff Kabaservice: It's a good question about what accounts for Musk's popularity and how that might translate into electoral terms. I mean, it's often said that the new currency in America when it comes to elections is attention. And he's certainly shown that he can get quite a lot of it. But on the other hand, really, he is actually even less popular right now in most polls than Donald Trump himself. So it's not quite clear what he has in mind with this venture. Sydney Pead: And you mentioned Trump's MAGA base just before. How much of that Make America Great Again voter base would Musk be able to bring along, do you think, to the American party? Geoff Kabaservice: Well, now we get into some trickiness here. In Washington, D.C., you can actually run into a lot of libertarians. And I would generally put Musk in the libertarian camp. But as it happens, only about 4% of the American electorate would answer to that description. Most Republicans are fiscally and socially conservative. Most Democrats are fiscally and socially liberal. But there would be perhaps some possibility to wean away some part of the MAGA base. And of course, third parties tend to run on anti-establishment energies. So, again, possible that Musk could be that kind of anti-establishment figure who might attract some kind of electoral support. Sydney Pead: There are already a number of other minor political parties in the U.S. The Libertarian Party is the third biggest. And there's also the Greens, which is smaller still. But they're not overly popular. So, so far, none have managed to break that two-party dominance in the U.S., right? Geoff Kabaservice: You know, it's very difficult for people not in the United States, not familiar with our political system, to understand how dominant the two-party system is. Sometimes it makes sense to call it a duopoly. And in fact, the last third party to actually succeed in becoming a major party was the Republican Party itself back in the 1850s. There are just many, many ways in which the American system is set up to systematically disadvantage third parties and prevent them from breaking through to major party status. Sydney Pead: Okay. But as we know, Musk has seemingly bottomless pockets. So is his ability to bankroll this venture, would that change the game for him? Geoff Kabaservice: Well, probably not, to be honest. Because, you know, it's actually often crossed the minds of various rich people that there ought to be a third party, preferably helmed by themselves, to bring wisdom and rationality to the American political system. Donald Trump himself actually flirted with this idea back in 2000 when he sought the nomination of the Reform Party. But actually, Trump had a much better perception of the American system by 2016 when he realised that far better than starting a non-viable third party would be to actually take over one of the two existing parties, which he did to great effect. You know, it is possible that Musk could actually choose to make a big political impact through some other vehicle than the one he's talking about right now. The elections that really matter in this country at the level of Congress are primary elections, which are typically closed to only members of either the Republican or the Democratic Party. They tend to be very low turnout elections in which some amount of money in advertising could have a significant impact. And if Musk really wanted to punish the Republicans who had voted for Trump's one big, beautiful bill, he would fund primary challengers within the Republican Party itself. But what he said is he actually wants to create this third party that would challenge both Republicans and Democrats. And that's a much, that's a much bigger reach. Sydney Pead: Much more ambitious. Musk did post that part of his strategy would be to laser focus on just two or three Senate seats and eight to 10 House districts. So if he was able to do that, what kind of impact could that have on the two major parties? Geoff Kabaservice: Well, I think the key word that you just used there was if. I mean, this is a pipe dream that goes back a long way. The idea being that in a very narrowly divided Congress, all you have to do is get a handful of bipartisan centrist legislators and they can form a bloc who can act as kingmakers in deciding whether to accept or reject any particular legislation. But the chances are very good that it'll come to nothing, even with somebody with as deep pockets as Elon Musk behind it. Sydney Pead: Okay. And Elon Musk, of course, was not born in the US, so he could never be president, right? But could the American Party run a candidate for president in 2028? Geoff Kabaservice: You know, anything's possible. But the very last presidential third party candidate to win any electoral college votes, which again, you can't win the election without those, was George Wallace running with the American Independent Party in 1968. I think he got 46 electoral votes, something like 13.5% of the popular vote. They can make some impact, but I don't think that's what Elon Musk has in mind with his grand plans for a third party. Sydney Pead: If a third party candidate doesn't win, can they still swing the vote there away from those two major parties? Geoff Kabaservice: You know, what third party candidates for president who are the most successful can do is cast doubt on the perceived legitimacy of the winner. But I think more than that, the third party candidate, if it's successful enough, can indicate a degree of dissatisfaction on the part of a significant segment of the population, with the establishment of both parties, with the absence of issues that are perceived to be very important for at least some segment of the population. And that can in turn impact the politics of the two established parties. Sydney Pead: Well, it is easy to be a bit dubious about Musk's moves, but overall, is competition in politics a good thing for the system? Good for democracy? Good for voters? What do you think? Geoff Kabaservice: If you ask voters, poll after poll for at least the last 25 years has determined that a majority of them do want or say they want a viable third party, and typically they feel that the two parties are too extreme. However, when they're actually given a chance to vote for third party candidates, they typically don't. But, you know, I remember from my historical training that Richard Hofstadter, the historian, said in 1955 that third parties are like bees. Once they have stung, they die. And I think what he was getting at was that sometimes there can be significant issues that aren't addressed by either of the two major parties. And in 1992, when Ross Perot was running for the presidency, he was running against the debt and deficit, somewhat along the lines of what Musk says he would like his third party to do. And he got 20% of the vote, which is not nothing. And that actually did very much impact the direction of Bill Clinton's presidency, because Clinton concentrated much more on balancing the budget and reinventing government than perhaps he would have if not for that kind of populist stimulus. So it's possible that Musk's project actually bear some political fruit. It just wouldn't accrue directly to his political party. Sydney Pead: Lastly, how bad do you think this could be for Donald Trump? Because to have Musk drawing not only attention away, but money? We know he spent more than a quarter of a billion US dollars helping Trump get into the White House in 2024. How big a difference could this make to the Republicans? Geoff Kabaservice: I don't think the Republican strategists that I know are taking this threat by Musk all that seriously at this point. If he were to actually shift his strategy toward mounting primary challenges in Republican districts, then they would take him very seriously indeed. But just the idea of a sort of third party defined by Elon Musk, hostile to Donald Trump, but also hostile to the Democrats, I don't think there's much of a fear on that account. And most Republican strategists that I know also are basically counting on Elon Musk dropping this once there's sufficient opposition from his boards. When Elon Musk made his announcement, the response of the markets was to actually drop Tesla stock by 7%. And Tesla stock overall is down 40% from its peak in December. So, you know, Musk has a lot of money, but the people he answers to on the boards of his company don't want him to keep losing money indefinitely. And I think that's definitely what they fear would emerge from this kind of political adventure. Sydney Pead: Geoff Kabaservice is a political scientist from the Niskanen Center, a centre-right think tank based in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Kara Jensen-Mackinnon, audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sydney Pead. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
The Australian
12 hours ago
- The Australian
Owen Farrell set to make Lions' tour debut after controversial call-up
Owen Farrell is set to play against a combined Australia-New Zealand side at the weekend, reports said Wednesday after his controversial call-up for the British and Irish Lions. The former England captain made the dash to Australia on Friday after his father, Lions coach Andy Farrell, summoned him as cover when utility back Elliot Daly broke his arm. It raised eyebrows with the 33-year-old earning the last of his 112 Test caps at the 2023 World Cup, and on the back of an underwhelming and injury-plagued season with French club Racing 92. Owen Farrell in action for Racing 92. Picture: Romain Perrocheau/AFP Owen Farrell in Lions' camp. Picture: Robbie Stephenson/PA Images via Getty Images The BBC and Sky Sports said the fly-half was in line to play against an AUNZ invitational side on Saturday after taking part in his first full training session in Canberra on Tuesday. Former Ireland No. 10 Johnny Sexton, the Lions' kicking coach, said he had fitted in seamlessly since arriving. British and Irish Lions Head Coach Andy Farrell (left) with assistant coach Johnny Sexton. Picture: Robbie Stephenson/PA Images via Getty Images 'As you'd expect with someone with that experience, he's fitted in. He's hit the ground running, so it's great to see,' Sexton told Sky. 'He must have had the playbook on the plane on the way over because he came in and he's not missed a beat. 'He's been on top of things in training and that's exactly why you pick someone with experience who knows about a Lions tour because it might take someone else 10 days to fit in.' Farrell, who is on his fourth Lions tour, announced last month he was returning to Saracens after a single season with Racing 92. That would again make him eligible to play for his country and Lions and England skipper Maro Itoje said he would love to see him back. 'If he wants to play for England, why not? That would be amazing if that is in his plans and in his dreams,' Itoje told the BBC. 'Owen is one of the best England players that we've ever seen. A fit Owen Farrell makes any team better. 'I've had the honour and privilege of playing alongside Owen for all but one of the years I've played professional rugby,' he added. 'He's a real team man. He always wants the team to do well. He's quite selfless in that respect.' The Adelaide game will be the Lions' fifth since arriving in Australia and the last for players to put their hand up to be in the matchday 23 for the first Test against the Wallabies on July 19.
ABC News
13 hours ago
- ABC News
BTN Newsbreak 09/07/2025
MOA BIRD The US biotech company that says they brought back the 'Dire Wolf', now want to bring back another extinct animal. They're a flightless bird, they were pretty big, and roamed New Zealand about 500 years ago. It's a moa bird! And Colossal Biosciences reckons they can genetically engineer living birds to make them look like the South Island Giant moa. That basically means extracting ancient moa bird DNA and then using that DNA to edit the genes of it's closest living relatives, like the elegant crested tinamou or the emu. They've managed to do this before, editing wolf genes with dire wolf DNA, and using woolly mammoth DNA to make fuzzy mice. And one day, they hope to bring back extinct animals to help endangered species and ecosystems in the future. Yeah some experts reckon we shouldn't be messing with nature and re-introducing new species could actually be bad for the environment. So what do you think? STATE OF ORIGIN More than 80 thousand fans are at Sydney's Olympic Stadium tonight to watch the Blues and Maroons in the State of Origin decider. Plenty of people are tuning in from home too -millions in fact - as the series is one of the year's biggest events on Aussie TV. The Blues won the opener back in May, but the Maroons held on to clinch a narrow victory in the second hit out. For the decider, the Blues have the home-field advantage, and if they're the ones to lift the shield at the end of the night, it will be their second year running. LINE-CALLINGIn tennis, we see plenty of these moments. That is until Wimbledon this year, because for the first time, line judges have been replaced by electronic line calling technology. And in some cases, it hasn't exactly been a smash hit. You see, the new system malfunctioned during the men's quarterfinal, tracking one of Taylor Fritz's shots in a rally, as if it was a serve. The AI tech also caused a stir earlier in the tournament, during Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova's game against Sonay Kartal, after it failed to make a clear out-call because it'd been "deactivated". Wimbledon organisers apologised for this error, but it's got a lot of people talking about tech's impact on the fairness and integrity of sport, and if it's still worth having people make these potentially game changing decisions. But others still reckon tech is the right call. CANINE WATER PARK First to Spain where these pups are giving this canine water park a whirl. It's called "Perros al Agua", which is Spanish for "Let's go for a swim, dogs", a sentence these guys seem to understand...I mean this pup even brought floaties. In Summer, about 800 dogs stop by every weekend. APPLE-1 COMPUTER Now to a special display in New York, showing off a very rare computer. And guess what, it still works! So you can in fact give it a whirl, if you're super rich that is. Experts say it's worth more than half a million dollars. LEGO F1 CAR And finally to this F1 car in England that, when given a whirl, can take you up to speeds of 20-kilometres per hour. Why so slow? Well, it's made out of Lego! 400,000 bricks to exact. It took a team of six expert model makers around 1,800 hours to make.
