Ross Chastain not thinking about points despite living on playoff bubble

Not even two years ago, Ross Chastain made the Championship 4 in his first season with Trackhouse Racing. With five races remaining in the 2024 regular season, however, the No. 1 team is in real danger of missing the postseason entirely.

The damage has been a byproduct of three consecutive finishes outside the top 20 entering Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC, NBC Sports App, IMS Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Before Nashville Superspeedway, Trackhouse’s home away from home, Chastain sat ninth in the regular-season championship standings.

He missed out on scoring any stage points at a track where he had never previously finished outside the top five. Yet, through strategy, No. 1 crew chief Phil Surgen got Chastain in a position to compete for the race win. In the first of what turned out to be five overtimes, Kyle Larson tagged Chastain entering Turn 1, where he backed into the outside wall and ended any hopes.

the second rendition of the Chicago Street Course, Chastain struggled in the varying track conditions and finished 22nd. He followed that up at Pocono Raceway last weekend with an early departure, wrecking in Turn 3 on Lap 53. The 36th-place finish was his second DNF in three races.

All the while, Chris Buescher has put together a solid streak of finishes over the last month, including top-five results at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Nashville. He catapulted past Chastain in points after Pocono, moving Chastain squarely on the elimination line entering Indianapolis, 27 points ahead of Bubba Wallace.

Chastain hasn’t won since the 2023 season finale at Phoenix Raceway. And while making the playoffs would give him a fighter’s chance of moving on throughout the playoffs, he wants to see Victory Lane.

“We’re here to win,” Chastain said on Saturday at Indianapolis. “That’s what we wake up every day to do, that’s what 150-plus employees at Trackhouse and everybody with the brainpower at GM and Chevrolet — that’s why we are in our positions and doing our careers and going through our lives chasing wins. If you don’t win; this is a sport that rewards winning. So, we’re looking to get back to that.”

Chastain knows his current situation. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that if the No. 1 team doesn’t stop the bleeding or if there is a new winner over the final five races, he could miss the playoffs for the first time under the Trackhouse banner.

“It’s simple math,” he added. “If I was thinking about points, I probably wouldn’t have wrecked last week.”

If there is a new winner, the battle would move up to where Buescher currently sits, 15th on the playoff grid, 17 points ahead of Chastain. Buescher is the defending winner of three upcoming races: Richmond, Michigan and Daytona.

That success doesn’t automatically give Buescher an advantage, however.

“Just because it worked that way for us last year, it doesn’t always translate, right?” Buescher said. “I’ll say we have great tracks coming up for us, but also, it hasn’t been one of those years where we felt like we haven’t been competitive and then just really picked up in the summer like we did last year. We weren’t where we needed to be for eight or 10 races at the beginning of the year. That’s not our case this year. We’ve been very good at a lot of places. It’s just, we’ve got to close the deal.”

Chastain has never won at any of the final five tracks to wind down the regular season. He has been in contention at Darlington Raceway and always has a shot at a place like Daytona International Speedway. His immediate concern is Indianapolis after placing 30th in practice on Friday with an ill-handling race car and set to take the green flag from the 28th starting position.

“Death grip on the wheel [during practice], turning into Turns 1 and 3 for us,” Chastain explained. “Bleeding a lot of speed, heavy on the brakes and not confident turning into the corner and really loose. I know Phil Surgen did a lot of work and changed a lot of stuff. The speed will come. I figured we would be two seconds off the pace with how much I was slowing down and sliding around.”

Chastain has a best finish of 17th in three prior Brickyard 400 attempts.