Chicago Turning Point: This season’s ever-increasing intensity, and can anybody beat SVG in the Windy City?

It's always funny when listening to sports prognosticators talk about whether an athlete "can" accomplish a goal or beat a particular opponent, etc., when more often than not the correct word should be "will." Of course it can happen. It's sports, just about anything can happen -- the question is really "will this happen" or "won't it happen?" For the above question, I very specifically mean "can." Literally -- can anybody beat Shane van Gisbergen this weekend? Like, is it actually possible? It's been a year, and plenty more incredible things have happened since, but let's please remember just how ridiculously impressive SVG's outmaneuvering of the field in the inaugural Chicago Street Race was. It was his first taste of action in any NASCAR series, with extremely limited seat time before the green flag flew, with a team/project in its infancy driving for a group of essentially strangers to the New Zealand native and he still rode to Victory Lane after biblical storms blew through the Windy City. Given that set of circumstances still produced a win, it feels fair to question if SVG is just going to be untouchable on this track -- the only one of its kind on the circuit -- for the foreseeable future. Even the drivers, themselves, aren't so sure if he's beatable. "I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see," defending Cup champion Ryan Blaney said last month at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. "Obviously, he's really talented. I've been enjoying watching his inaugural Xfinity season. He's a good guy. I've gotten to talk to him a good bit, and he loves the sport and really enjoys it. I don't know if he'll have as much of an advantage this year because everyone was kind of in the same boat last year as far as first time there, but he raced on a lot of street courses, and the V8 (Supercars) stuff and the rain and all that craziness that went on. He probably had a little bit of a leg up on everybody and it showed, and he took advantage of it and won the race. Hopefully, we can all draw a little bit closer to him at that place to where he doesn't embarrass us like he did last year. We'll see, though." Van Gisbergen now has an additional four Cup starts -- two of which were road courses -- under his belt, along with two victories in the 17 Xfinity Series races he's run this year as he seeks a title there. He's now an official American resident as well, and he's no doubt more comfortable on the general NASCAR side of things than he was a year ago. And a comfortable driver is a fast driver, especially on a type of track that he knows especially well and certainly better than anybody else in the field. The rain was a clear factor in last year's race, with SVG looking like a duck amongst cats as he splished and splashed around the tight, 12-turn city streets with ease while the other 36 cars tip-toed cautiously. Should Sunday's race be run in the dry, however, it could tighten things up. "I don't think it will be as much of an advantage (if it doesn't rain), but there's no doubt that street courses seem to be his wheelhouse," Logano said at NHMS. "There's no doubt he's good on road courses as well, like the typical road courses. He's great at those as well, but it did seem like a street course he felt way more at home when we all felt like a fish out of water going around that race track. Then you added rain. It was perfect for him and he capitalized as he should. For 99% of the field that was the first time for any of us to do anything like that and we all have very limited experience of racing in the rain. "We also had a lot to lose where he had nothing to lose. ... Like, you look at those walls and it is like, whoa, there are a lot of points in those walls. For him, who cared? I think all those things weighed into it for sure. I think this year, now that we all have a general idea of what we're going into, we can prepare for it. It's hard to prepare for something when you're blind and you don't know what it's going to be like. I'm sure he's still going to have a lot more experience with this stuff than we do, but I think we'll close the gap a lot."