NASCAR in Mexico City results: Shane van Gisbergen uses road course mastery to earn international win

SVG's second Cup Series win comes in the first Cup race outside the United States in the modern era

By Steven Taranto

Jun 15, 2025 at 7:59 pm ET • 5 min read

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After a rough start to his weekend in Mexico City, Shane van Gisbergen found race day to be smooth sailing by leading 60 of 100 laps to win the inaugural Viva Mexico 250 at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. Van Gisbergen, a New Zealander in his rookie year as a full-time Cup driver after winning championships in Australia's V8 Supercars tour, earned his second career victory in the first NASCAR Cup Series race on foreign soil since 1958 and first of the sport's modern era.

Getting to Mexico City to begin with proved quite the challenge for Van Gisbergen, as he was among the NASCAR drivers and industry personnel whose trip south of the border was delayed Thursday after their plane suffered a mechanical failure as it was preparing to take off from Charlotte, N.C. It took an early morning flight for Van Gisbergen to finally get to the racetrack for practice Friday, but the complications of international travel didn't end there despite him winning the pole. Prior to the start of Sunday's race, Van Gisbergen reportedly began to feel unwell before strapping in to his Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet.

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Steven Taranto

If Van Gisbergen was struggling behind the wheel, it certainly didn't look like it. The road racing ace was in command of the field throughout Sunday's race, easily handling a transition from wet to dry conditions before taking complete control after a caution in the middle of green flag stops fell in a way that played into Van Gisbergen's strategy while going against that of his nearest competitor, Ty Gibbs.

"I felt pretty rubbish today -- leaking out both holes, that wasn't fun," Van Gisbergen joked to Prime. "Our car, it was amazing. I think the 54 was close, but that last stint, man, what a pleasure just ripping lap after lap and watching them get smaller in the mirror. Unreal."

Van Gisbergen's domination of Sunday's race came thanks in part to some advice from four-time F1 World Champion Max Verstappen, who Van Gisbergen texted before the race looking for advice on how to drive Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in wet conditions with rain in the forecast. "A little bit in the wet, and just what lines to take and how to approach it. What a guy," Van Gisbergen said of what Verstappen told him.

Van Gisbergen won by a prohibitive 16.5 seconds over runner up Christopher Bell, with Chase Elliott third, Alex Bowman fourth and Michael McDowell fifth. John Hunter Nemechek ran sixth, followed by Chase Briscoe in seventh, Cole Custer -- who earned his first top 10 of the year -- in eighth, William Byron ninth and Chris Buescher 10th.

While the driver known as SVG put on a clinic out front, most of the other drivers in the Cup field partook in the sort of slam-bang affair befitting of a lucha libre. A multi-car crash in wet conditions took both Kyle Busch and Kyle Larson out of contention, and after the checkered flag, two particular luchadores ended up in una guerra de palabras that escalated an existing feud.

After Carson Hocevar locked up his brakes in the stadium section of the course and spun out Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for the second time in the last three races, Stenhouse angrily confronted Hocevar in his car after the race, making it clear to him that the foreign soil they were on was the only thing keeping him from taking further action. "I will beat your ass," Stenhouse could be heard saying from Hocevar's in-car camera. "I will when we get back to the States!"

This is what Ricky Stenhouse Jr. told Carson Hocevar after the race from Hocevar's onboard.

Hocevar tried to explain that he locked his brakes up but Stenhouse wasn't having it. pic.twitter.com/TlpHyQL42n
— Steven Taranto (@STaranto92) June 15, 2025

"I just got left and in the marbles and slid a lot longer than I expected," Hocevar told reporters of the incident, which came after Hocevar was already running a lap down due to earlier problems. "Obviously, number one, not somebody that I would ever want to hit again. But number two, I wasn't racing anybody. I was just logging laps and just trying to wait on a yellow and maybe see if we could put our day back together. I just hit a curb wrong and got in the marbles and slid all the way through the corner.

"I tried to turn left to avoid him, but just a really, really sloppy day by me."

Mexico native Daniel Suarez, who won Saturday's Xfinity Series race in front of his home country, finished in the top 10 in both stages and briefly took the lead after a restart, but faded to 19th at the finish. Suarez finished just ahead of Ryan Truex in 23rd, who spent the day filling in for Denny Hamlin behind the wheel of the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing. Hamlin did not make the trip to Mexico City due to the birth of his son, giving the younger brother of former Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr. the opportunity to make his first Cup start since 2014.

In winning the inaugural Cup race at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez after winning the inaugural Chicago Street Race in his 2023 Cup debut, Shane van Gisbergen becomes the first driver to earn both of his first two Cup wins in inaugural races at a track since Marvin Porter won at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds in 1957 and Marchbanks Speedway in 1960. Van Gisbergen's 16.567 second margin of victory is also the largest in any Cup race since Kurt Busch won at Texas by 25.686 seconds in the fall of 2009.