Shane van Gisbergen remains flawless in Chicago with victory in the Xfinity Series

CHICAGO – With three laps to go, Shane van Gisbergen passed Jesse Love for the lead, pulled away and won the Xfinity Series race on the streets of Chicago on Saturday.

Van Gisbergen has won the last two races in Chicago. He is the defending champion heading into Sunday’s Cup race (4:30 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock).

Van Gisbergen’s victory on Saturday is his third consecutive win on a road course, equalling the series record held by AJ Allmendinger and Terry Labonte.

MORE: Xfinity race results

MORE: Xfinity Driver Points

Ty Gibbs finished second and Kyle Larson finished third. Parker Kligerman started from the back of the field to change the engine and finished fourth. Love rounded out the top five.

Larson and van Gisbergen put on a thrilling show during the first half of the 50-lap race on the 2.2-mile, 12-turn track.

In the first 23 laps they changed the lead five times. At one point van Gisbergen gave Larson, who was driving behind him, a thumbs up.

“I had a blast,” Larson said afterward. “Of course I wanted to win, but more than anything I wanted to learn. I wanted to compete with him because he’s just really good at creating shapes and angles when passing. That was a goal of mine. The first opportunity I got, I wanted to race because I just didn’t know if I would get the chance to race against him again.”

Van Gisbergen described the race against Larson as “great fun”.

“I had a lot of fun,” he said.

Winner of the 1st stage: Shane van Gisbergen

Winner of the 2nd stage: Austin Hill

Who drove a good race: Parker Kligerman’s fourth-place finish was his best of the season and his fifth top-10 finish in the last six races. … Connor Mosack finished sixth in his first Xfinity start of the season. … Joey Logano finished eighth, driving the No. 15 for AM Racing in place of Hailie Deegan. Logano gave the team its best finish of the year. … Austin Green finished 10th, making it three top-10s in his first four Xfinity starts.

Who had a bad race: Chandler Smith, who started the race second in the points standings, finished last in the 38-car field after an engine failure. It was the third engine problem for Joe Gibbs Racing this weekend. The teams of John Hunter Nemechek and Sheldon Creed swapped engines before Saturday’s race. Smith dropped to third place in the points standings.

Next: The series races will take place on July 13th at Pocono Raceway (3:00 p.m. ET in the US).