Ross Chastain has not had the flashiest of NASCAR Cup Series seasons. The No. 1 team might be the least talked-about of all the playoff contenders.
However, it will become increasingly harder to fly under the radar if Chastain and his team continue to quietly handle business. Chastain, for example, was the best Chevrolet driver a weekend ago at Darlington Raceway until a late-race fuel issue dropped him to an 11th-place finish. Statistically, it was his best race of the season.
Chastain averaged a sixth-place running position throughout the night. He spent over 95 percent of the laps inside the top 15. It was only the second time this season in which Chastain qualified and finished inside the top 10.
“I could see the leader,” the Trackhouse Racing driver said with a smile Saturday. “It was great. I had a shot on a restart and a restart on the front row. I haven’t had that in months, legitimately on the front row. I couldn’t quite stay there, but it was good enough to be up there.
“So, yeah, more of that, please. More of that.”
A victory in May in the Coca-Cola 600 earned Chastain his playoff berth. He was sitting inside the top 10 in points until late in the regular season, when the team racked up three consecutive finishes of 24th or worse.
Chastain earned the fifth-most points of any driver at Darlington Raceway. The week prior, the regular season finale at Daytona, he earned the third most points.
“It feels like we definitely put together an effort there that is worthy of a lot of good things coming our way,” he said of last week. “If we run like we did in the summer, we’re not going to get enough points. The effort at Darlington was great. It was a great experience going through practice, qualifying, and then the race.”
The postseason started with Chastain as the No. 12 seed and a one-point gap on the cutline to advance into the next round. He pushed that to 21 points after Darlington Raceway.
“It’s just speed in my mind,” he said of the state of things for his team. “If we’re fast here like we were at Darlington, and that was right off the truck – I had grip the first corner I hit the track, and I knew the grip I was looking for was there. Then it was about putting together speed, and we didn’t do it great across the entire run in practice, but we were good early, and that translated in the race for us.
“So, speed. It’s as simple as when you start racing, and my dad was trying to teach me to go fast at 12 years old. It’s the same stuff here. It’s just Phil Surgeon now trying to teach me how to be fast and how to maximize the car.”