Joe Gibbs Racing takes top three as Briscoe wins in Joliet

Chase Briscoe won the NASCAR Cup Series race at Chicagoland Speedway on Independence Day weekend, giving Joe Gibbs Racing a sweep of the top three spots and earning his first victory of the season. Briscoe started seventh, led 51 laps in the 400-mile race and beat teammate Christopher Bell by 0.276 seconds after the finish was settled in the closing laps and through lapped traffic. Briscoe said he believed Bell had the faster car at the end and called the win “a little redemption” after feeling he had let one slip away the previous week. Crew chief James Small’s final pit-cycle decision helped Briscoe take the lead from William Byron, who had won both stages before fading.

The result gave Joe Gibbs Racing a clean sweep at the front, with Bell finishing second and Denny Hamlin third. Hamlin started on the pole, led 30 laps and entered the race as the Cup Series points leader. He left Chicagoland with his lead over Tyler Reddick stretched to 44 points after Reddick finished 36th with a punctured radiator. Briscoe’s victory was his sixth career Cup Series win and moved him up to eighth in the standings, securing his playoff position.

The race marked NASCAR’s first return to Chicagoland Speedway in seven years and drew a sold-out crowd in Joliet, Illinois. Bell’s runner-up finish was his best result in the No. 20 car since his crash at Michigan earlier in the summer and continued a rebound that included a fifth-place finish at Sonoma. The win was also Joe Gibbs Racing’s third by one of its four drivers in the 2026 season, and Toyota collected its 12th win in the first 19 races.