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Ross Chastain will never forget arguably the greatest moment of his NASCAR Cup career. But it’s also time to finally put that memory in his rearview mirror and focus on the present and the future.
The Florida watermelon farmer hopes to achieve both of those this weekend at Martinsville Speedway.
It was roughly 2 ½ years ago – October 30, 2022, to be exact – that Chastain made NASCAR history with one of the craziest moves ever seen not just in NASCAR, but pretty much any other form of racing for that matter.
A longtime video game player, Chastain utilized what Dale Earnhardt Jr. precisely described as a “video game move”, by riding Martinsville’s outside retaining wall for the final half-lap of the penultimate race of the season.
That move was right out of a PlayStation or X-Box playbook, and it wound up putting Chastain in the Championship 4 season-ending race the following week in Phoenix.
What’s ironic is that Chastain wasn’t sure his bold move would work. And even more ironic is the fact that Denny Hamlin, who felt assured that he’d be heading to Phoenix for yet another shot at his first-ever Cup championship (he’s still championship-less in six tries), was stunned when, about 50 feet from the finish line, he looked to his right and saw Chastain pass right by to finish fifth in the race.
Chastain continues to be asked – and dutifully rehashes – his memories of that day. On Friday, he spoke with Winston-Salem, N.C. station WXLV-TV about that final last half-lap around the half-mile paperclip-shaped racetrack, the oldest active racetrack on the Cup circuit today:
“I remember it hurt a lot,” Chastain said, lamenting the pain of banging off the wall constantly at over 140 mph. “It was a desperate attempt to pass two cars. I ran the last lap and I was desperate, I was willing to do anything. And for some reason, my mind went to run the wall in (turns) 3 and 4, and I couldn’t think of a reason why not.
So I held it wide open and shifted up to fifth – a gear we don’t use, we use third gear in the corners and fourth gear on the straightaways here at Martinsville. I had an extra gear, which helped and the wall only slowed me down a couple miles per hour.
“I went about twice as fast as I would have. I was up right around 140 mph at the minimum, which is normally our straightaway speed. In the corner here, you go about 75 mph. So it was fast, it felt fast, it felt like I was going to flip over, but luckily the car kept three tires on the ground all the way through the corner. The left front was off the ground, and it made it.
“We passed five cars and we only needed (to pass) two, but that sent us to the championship race in Phoenix to fight for a championship. It was my first year with Trackhouse (Racing); that was a big moment for us.”
But that was then and Sunday’s Cook-Out 400 is now. In what will be his 13th career Cup start at Martinsville, Chastain hopes to finally put his video game heroics behind him and leave the shortest track in NASCAR Cup annals with an even greater achievement: winning the race and the iconic trademark Grandfather’s Clock.
