A very Kiwi Sunday

 America celebrated itself over the long Fourth of July weekend, but you've gotta hand it to those plucky folks from New Zealand. Apparently they never met a private party they wouldn't brazenly crash.

See what happened yesterday, for instance?

In Chicago, a 36-year-old street-course savant from Auckland once again showed the NASCAR boys how it's done, winning the Streets of Chicago Cup race from the pole a day after winning the Infiniti series race.

Just outside Lexington, Ohio, meanwhile, a 44-year-old IndyCar immortal from Auckland won that series' race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, his 59th career victory and seventh at Mid-Ohio. It was his first victory of the 2025 season, and extended his streak of consecutive IndyCar seasons with at least one W to a mind-boggling 21.

Ladies and gentlemen, say hello again to Scott Dixon, the greatest IndyCar driver of his generation.

And say hello (again) to Shane Van Gisbergen, who drops into Cup racing every so often to teach a lesson in how you negotiate a street course in a stock car.

SVG's win at Chicago was his fourth win in five starts there, counting Infiniti events. It was his second victory in three Streets of Chicago races, and he'd likely have been 3-for-3 (and 5-for-5 all told) had he not gotten caught up in a crash last year.

His win Sunday was his second street-course win this season. He also dropped in for the inaugural Mexico City street race and scooped that one.

The man's just good on common thoroughfares. And that's especially true on the tight, tricky Chicago layout, where a pileup three laps in Sunday stopped the race for a time and looked like nothing so much as your typical rush hour on Lakeshore Drive -- which, of course, is part of the Chicago circuit.

Dixon, meanwhile, played a two pit-stop strategy to perfection to get up front, then stalked Alex Palou until IndyCar's most dominant made a rare mistake -- he entered a corner too hot and too wide and went off-roading for a few yards, which allowed Dixon to snatch the lead.

After that it was just Dixie employing all his veteran tricks to move dirty air around in his wake and keep the onrushing Palou at bay. Another lesson from the master for his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate to file away for future reference.

A very Kiwi Sunday, all-in-all. And so, on a weekend where we asked God to bless America, God bless New Zealand, too.  

Or whatever they say down there.