Ross Chastain Eager to Snap Serious Slump at Kansas

After poor results in the first two races of the season, Chastain flipped a switch and put the rest of the garage on notice. The Trackhouse Racing driver finished 3rd at Las Vegas and followed that up with a pair of runner-up finishes at Phoenix and Atlanta. Then came the breakthrough win that everyone felt coming.

Never known as a Road Course ace, Chastain found himself in a three-way battle for the win at Circuit of The Americas. After jockeying with AJ Allmendinger and Alex Bowman, Chastain decided that enough was enough. He shoved Allmendinger into Bowman near the final corner on the last lap and cruised to his first career Cup win.

It was a dicey move by Chastain, and would unfortunately be a theme for him this season.

Ross earned another top-five finish at Martinsville, where there is always contact with other cars. He then went out and delivered another victory for Trackhouse in a wild race at Talladega. That was followed by a 3rd place finish at Dover, two more top-fives at Nashville and Road America, and another runner-up finish at Atlanta.

There were solid results nearly every weekend, but there was also plenty of criticism for the way he was driving. Denny Hamlin has had the most high-profile encounters with Chastain this season, and he has made his feelings known on several occasions. Hamlin has vowed revenge, but that has not come yet.

"You only want to pay back when it counts,” Hamlin said. "You’re going to have to fence these guys hard just to kind of get their attention, but it’s going to have to be meaningful. It’s going to be on a meaningful day." It’s safe to say that Denny is still waiting for that right time, in these playoffs.

With all of the noise surrounding him, Ross has tried to tune it all out. “I don’t actually keep up with what people are saying. On track, yeah, I know who’s around me, and I know obviously know every situation and every scenario that’s happened this year. You can tell right away if a car is being driven aggressively against me or not. Off the track, I probably don’t do a good enough job to keep up with words being said.”

With the playoffs inching closer, Chastain began to struggle. At times, it seemed as though he lost confidence in himself, and really doubted whether or not he needed to change his driving style.

After a brutal day of on-track incidents at Gateway, Chastain felt that he owed an apology to some of his fellow drivers. "I just was way off on my driving today and running into people is not acceptable at this level. It's completely unacceptable that I did that to so many guys. I cannot believe, standing here right now, that I just made so many mistakes back-to-back. That’s just terrible driving on my part. I should not be in this car if I’m going to do that. I absolutely drove over my head."

Shortly after making those comments, Trackhouse team owner Justin Marks made an emphatic statement that he does not want his drivers to change who they are, or how they race. That seemed to inject some confidence back into Ross.

"I’m learning as I go. In my interview at Gateway, I just froze up a bit and over-apologized. I was sorry that I wrecked him, but I didn’t get across what I was trying to, and I got into this downward spiral that I tend to do and over-apologized. That being said, I’m not going to roll over and stay behind everybody."

Whatever happened to Ross, it has certainly affected his on-track performance.

The last seven races, in particular, have been quite alarming. He finished 32nd at Pocono after crashing and 27th on the IMS road course after trying to circumvent the system. At Michigan he finished 24th and was 18th at Richmond. On another road course at Watkins Glen, he had a disappointing 21st place result. To end the regular season, he crashed at Daytona and finished 33rd.

In his first playoff race last weekend, he was nowhere to be found and finished 20th. Fortunately, most of the other playoff drivers had some sort of problem, which worked in his favor. It wasn't the result they wanted, but given all of the obstacles his team had to overcome, Chastain was encouraged.

"We try to prepare for moments like that. It’s not in my control. It’s a freak deal that we haven’t had happen in the whole time we’ve had this car, so it took me a while to describe what was happening. To come back to 20th and fight the way we fought is just a testament to this team."

Ross dropped from 3rd to 8th in the standings, now just 15 points above the cut line. That is the danger zone, especially considering guys below him like Chase Elliott, Kyle Busch, Daniel Suarez, and Kevin Harvick are all likely to rebound in these next two races.

This breakout season for Chastain came mostly out of nowhere. He is thankful for that, but also feels like he belongs. “It’s pretty wild. This is all different. Even go back one calendar year, and the guys that I trained with were all here, and I was the only one in the group not. That was humbling. I worked to get here, but I just never thought I would get here, honestly."

Despite another disappointing result last weekend at Darlington, Chastain is confident heading into today's race at Kansas, where he finished 7th in the Spring. "I don't think this race is going to be too much different from the spring. I think just like then, when we were contending within the top-five, I think we’ll have that same speed again."

"The great thing about Kansas is that you can make the bottom work if you’re better. You’re not stuck in line, but you don’t want to give the guy behind you momentum and clean air. These cars like momentum, so it’s a mix of offense and defense." Ross qualified 5th yesterday, and should have a shot at the checkered flag.

Winning is what got Ross into the playoffs, and he needs more of that to right the ship. "I want to go win, but I really just want good races. I don’t want to be in the news for the obvious reasons earlier in the year. There’s nothing comfortable about racing in the Cup Series and I like it that way."

Chastain has made his bed this season, and now he must lay in it. The looming threat of retaliation and payback will always be there, but Ross knows that he just needs to focus on the road ahead. "We have plenty of speed. As long as we just have clean races, we’ll be fine."