Chicago Street Race | SVG vs Reddick | NASCAR’s Controversial Caution – Matt Spano Racing show Ep. 4

For maybe the last time in NASCAR Cup Series history, the streets of Chicago delivered a wild show — and for once, rain didn’t ruin it! Shane van Gisbergen swept the weekend, taking pole and the win in both Cup and Xfinity, but not without controversy.

Carson Hocevar triggered a pileup early, Denny Hamlin’s engine blew before qualifying, all the Hendrick cars clipped the wall and had to start at the back, and Bubba Wallace spun twice — plus an unexpected calm showdown with Bowman.

Then there’s Ross Chastain and Joey Logano: that beef isn’t over. And when Cody Ware lost his brakes at over 100 mph late in the race, NASCAR didn’t throw the caution until SVG took the white flag — race control drama at its finest.

Oh, and my 10-year-old son actually sat and watched this one — NASCAR, you might just be winning the next generation if you keep the chaos coming!

➡️ Who was your driver of the day? Drop your thoughts in the comments — and don’t forget to like & subscribe for more weekly NASCAR recaps and rants.

#NASCAR #ChicagoStreetRace #ShaneVanGisbergen #TylerReddick #CarsonHocevar #DennyHamlin #JoeyLogano #RossChastain #NASCAR2025

For maybe the last time in Cup Series history, the streets of Chicago delivered an amazing race for the Cup Series. Now, I know there’s like a third of you out there that disagree with that statement based off the poll on Twitter, but I happen to believe that this race was absolutely a pretty banger of a race. You know, we’ll get into who won and the details of this race here in a minute, but this was 75 laps around Grant Park. And for once, we didn’t have rain. Even though there was rain probably a mile away from the track at the end, it never came to the track. So, I’m thankful we actually had a Chicago street race without rain. Shane van Ginsburgen took pole in this race and he actually took pole in the Exfinity race as well. But for the first few laps, it was actually McDow that had the pace over Shane Van Ginsburg who put him in second place. Now, this was all of course until lap four when Carson Hosar took the 10-11 turn and hit the right side wall, hit the left side wall, and kind of bounce off like a ping-pong ball and then caused a major pileup right there in the middle of the track. Nobody could get by for a minute. Now, I know everybody likes to hate on Carson Hosvar, and Cup Series drivers are no exception to that rule because there were several of them that as they passed and saw who was at the front of that wreck, commented that he was a complete idiot and some other choice words. Now, I am of the opinion that whether you’re a Ricky driver, whether you’re Carson Hosvar, Carson, Kyle Larson, whoever, wrecks are going to happen in Chicago. So, it’s just part of the deal. I don’t necessarily think that he deserves the hate for that one. It’s just an incident. He clipped the wall, but that wreck did cause a red flag to come out and it put about a 15 20 minute delay on the track while they had to clean all that up. It was a pretty big one. But before the green flag even dropped, there was already so much drama in this race. Denny Hamlin got like half of a lap of practice in. Didn’t qualify because his engine blew up. He was actually on the ground up underneath the car trying to figure out what caused that issue, engine issue. It was completely insane. You know, we had people like Elliot, uh, Bowman, Byron, all clipping the wall and damaging their cars. And all Hinder cars even had to start from the back because they had unapproved, uh, not unapproved engine changes, just unapproved changes on their car after they, you know, clipped the wall and they had to repair it. You know, Bubba spun twice. Kazowski hit the wall as well. It was just, it was chaos in practice and qualifying for sure before the green flag even dropped. You know, as I said, McDow took the lead early and held off SVG for a while, but there was some lead changes there in the beginning and pit strategy definitely played a role into it. You people gambling whether they should do a one-stop race in Chicago, which is crazy. I think we need to have a discussion around whether the tires need to fall off more or less fuel in the cars, you know, a bubble inside the tank for, for instance, or balloons, excuse me, in the tank. Uh, but those are all things that, you know, probably don’t need to be discussed because Chicago’s not coming back next year, it looks like, which is probably a good thing. Let’s go ahead and move on to another street course. You know, there were some lead changes here and there, but there were tons of cautions across the track. People were hitting the wall left and right, which let me go back to the Carson Hosvar thing for a moment. Why did he get so much hate when everybody else didn’t? It’s just it’s popular to hate on Carson Hosar right now. For whatever reason, the Cup Series drivers do not like him. He’s aggressive. I’ll give him that, but the hate is a little unwarranted in my opinion. Now, there was one incident that I thought was going to blow up into something much worse than what it actually did, and that was the Bowman and Wallace wreck. Um, Bubba Bubba Wallace got spun by Bowman for sure. Ended up in the wall, broke and was out of the race. And I thought Bubba Wallace was going to confront Bowman after the race and he did. They talked about it, but it seemed very friendly. They said they would discuss it later. there was too many people around, but they both had smiles on their face, and from all everything I can see, it was a non-issue, which is surprising to me. SVG pretty much put on a master class this entire race, and if it wasn’t for cautions, he probably would had an even bigger lead. However, in the very last few laps, Tyler Reic was on a charge. He decided to pit a couple laps before that and got new tires and those new tires were working and chains were falling off a cliff. Now, he was approaching him. He was like a second faster every lap and he needed like another lap or two to catch him. But right at the very last two laps to go, right before Shane Van Ginsburg and crosses the checkered finish line, shoot before he even takes the last corner, Cody Wear completely loses his brakes and slams into a wall. If you haven’t seen it, he’s going well over 100 miles an hour straight into this wall with no brakes. Uh thankfully he seems to be okay. Scary crash for him. We saw it on the broadcast. NASCAR had to have seen it. They did not throw the yellow flag until SVG crossed the line to take the white uh the white flag, excuse me. This is outrageous from NASCAR. This is a little bit of race fixing in my opinion. And I think the impending weather that was coming had something to do with it because they did not want a wet weather race to end this race. All that aside, it doesn’t matter. You had Cody Wear going to the wall that hard that fast. That should have been an immediate yellow. forget the rest of the race. Look after your driver’s NASCAR. That was a little bit insane. So SVG takes the white flag and then they throw the caution right after that and the race ends under caution and SVG gets his win. He also got a win in Exfinity, believe it or not. So he took pole in both races and got the win in both races. Something that hasn’t happened for a while. And you know, I’m I’m happy for him. Obviously, I’ve got the track track house hat on here, but I’m not a fan of the way he won the Exfinity race. He used up Connor Zillich so much and pretty much put him in the wall on turn one on that restart. Um, I know rubbing his racing. I I get it. I I know all that stuff. He used up his teammate way too much though in that final restart. Not a fan of that at all. I think Connor Zelich had an amazing race. I think he probably would have won. Um, maybe not. Maybe Shane would have got him in, you know, turn three or four, turn 10 or whatever. Um, it just it happened. I’m not a fan of it. That’s pretty much all I got to say on that. Another talking point coming out of this race is Joey Logano and Ross Chastain again. Um, Ross Chastain got hit and he thought it was Joey Logano who who hit him, but he decided to take some retaliation out and he spuno. Logano was pretty upset. I almost said something I shouldn’t have on here. He he was upset. Extremely upset. He was calling him an Mfer and everything else on the radio. And um I would not be surprised to see some payback next week from Mago towards Chestning. You know, this is where we could talk about the bracket challenge, but let’s be honest, who cares anymore? I I love the idea of it at the beginning of this the the season and you know, the inseason tournament here with the brackets. It was just very poorly done. There was no second chance bracket because everybody’s got brackets bracket got busted, excuse me, after the first race on the Super Speedway. Um, it’s just it was very poorly put together and something like they threw at us the last moment even though they had a year or so to plan for it. Uh, I hope they bring it back and I hope they do a better job of it. Something like the NCAA tournament where they do. Um, it’s a good idea, don’t get me wrong. Definitely a good idea. Poor execution though. And so I’m not even going to cover it because it nobody cares anymore. Let’s be real. You know, if I had to pick a driver of the day personally, I got to go with Shane Van Ginsburg. And you know, he was the dominant racer here. Close second though was Tyler Reic. Like I said, I think he would have caught him had we gone to a green white checkered finish under caution. We’ll never know obviously, but those two drivers were definitely the best of the the race for sure. You know, one other thing I want to talk about here for a moment was this is the first race that my son who’s 10 years old actually sat down to watch with me. tried to get him into motorsports for a while and he has actually being a little bit respect recept receptive to it and um you know he actually enjoyed the race. So NASCAR, you’re doing something right here. You got a 10-year-old to pay attention. Uh he was in it for the paint schemes. He liked, you know, the orange cars and he liked the pickle car for sure. Um so those were his drivers. You know, obviously two of them didn’t do so hot, but you know, reic at the end in the orange car, he was cheering them on. So NASCAR, you have a younger generation ready to consume NASCAR. Keep doing keep doing what you’re doing. Like don’t listen to the haters. Put it on prime. Let’s just go young here, please. The next race is Soma. Another uh road style race. So obviously SVG’s in the mix here, but Kyle Larson’s pretty good. And I wouldn’t put it past Reic. I’m telling you, Reic on these street courses is getting better and better and he is going to win one of these races for sure. So my luck for next week. Let’s go Reic. I think SVG is going to going to lose out to Reic. Drop your comments below and uh you know if you’re watching on YouTube or Spotify, hit the like button and share this podcast with whoever you want to. Even if they don’t like NASCAR, let’s like I said, let’s bring some more NASCAR people into the to the mix here. Take care guys.