NASCAR driver Ross Chastain is no stranger to high-speed wrecks, but at Richmond Raceway on Aug. 15, his focus was on helping fans avoid them off the track.<\/p>\n
Chastain spent an hour signing hats, shirts and posters and talking one-on-one with fans during the \u201cWho\u2019s Your Driver?\u201d event, a partnership with the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles and Drive Smart Virginia to promote safe driving.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Chastain, the message is personal. In 2011, one of his closest friends was in a car crash that left him unable to walk. The experience, Chastain said, changed how he thinks about driving.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people get behind the wheel, they should remember the real victory lap is making it home,\u201d Chastain said. \u201cWearing a seat belt and choosing a sober driver aren\u2019t just safety tips, they\u2019re decisions that save lives.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The program, created by the Virginia DMV Highway Safety Office and Drive Smart Virginia, addresses the dangers of impaired driving and failing to wear seat belts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chastain said he recognized early in his NASCAR career that crashes on the track aren\u2019t so different from those on public roads.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI do crash a lot, and that\u2019s part of the sport of NASCAR,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I could get people to listen, maybe one more person wears their seat belt, one more person makes the right decision when they have a beer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chastain was in town for the Cook Out 400 at Richmond Raceway on Aug. 16, when Austin Dillon took the checkered flag and Chastain finished 19th, one lap down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ben Steelman, a fan at the event, said meeting Chastain was a highlight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think [this event] is part of what makes NASCAR so cool,\u201d Steelman said. \u201cIt\u2019s not perfect. There\u2019s a lot of reasons to not love everything NASCAR does, but they do a pretty good job of making things like this fan-friendly and affordable for everyone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR driver Ross Chastain is no stranger to high-speed wrecks, but at Richmond Raceway on Aug. 15, his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[425,99],"class_list":["post-101350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}