When Ross Chastain was released from the infield care center after crashing his primary car on Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway, he rejoined his No. 1 team with a paradoxical laughter.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he said to team owner Justin Marks and crew chief Phil Surgen.
It’s been kind of a grind the past calendar year for Trackhouse Racing. Prior to crashing out of practice on Saturday, they were the fastest in almost every statistical measurement, and that hasn’t often been the case during this organizational skid.
Marks said that was their key takeaway even in the face of adversity.
“Obviously, we had a problem in practice, went to the backup car, started last, but the confidence was really, really high,” Marks said. “When we wrecked this car on Saturday and I was sitting there at the car in the garage, and they were pulling parts off it, and Ross left the infield care center and walked up to the car, he had a huge smile on his face.
“He was, like, I know this sucks but that’s what I’m talking about. Bringing car to the racetrack like that, that’s what I’m talking about.”
Part of that was just an honest assessment but it was also motivation for Surgen and their team as they constructed a backup car down the road at Trackhouse headquarters, the benefit of having a home race.
Surgen personally got two hours of sleep leading his crew.
“Probably 30 people there at 8:30 last night,” Surgen said. “As the night wore on and different stages of the process kind of evolved, we sent some of those guys home, and the last of us, there were probably eight or ten of us that left at 2:30 last night. The first guys got back there at 5:30.
“So a couple of hours of sleep and back at it this morning. We worked all the way up until the wire until we had to re-inspect today at 2:00 p.m.”
Their job was done and then Chastain did his – methodically working his way through the field and becoming the first driver to win from a last place starting spot since Bobby Allison at Richmond in 1969.
54 years!
“I mean, it’s sinking in that we won the World 600,” Chastain said using the original event branding. “We won the Coke 600, but what that means for the team and me and everything else, I mean, you saw us crash yesterday. They were up until 2:30. I left at 10:00. They stayed there long after I was gone. They were back at 5:30. They rebuilt the car, and we put ourselves in — we just slowly worked our way.
“It took all 600 miles. A 400-mile race here, we don’t get there. We’re not in contention. It took the whole time.”
Chastain, the figurative diamond in the rough, carried his team to a victory after contributing to their setback. It’s part and parcel to the identity of this organization that Chastain picks up the organization and carries them, both in the micro and macro.
“Ross, you know, he’s such an elite talent, and he’s really one of the founding members of this organization,” Marks said. “What I’ve said throughout the year is the problem that we have to diagnose is the fact that we don’t unload with a lot of speed.
“We have to do a lot of work on the weekends to put races together, and the execution that Ross and a lot of the teams inside of Trackhouse have is really, really good on Sundays. It’s just really hard to do it in this era of the sport. If you’re starting 25th, 28th, 30th, whatever, to get up there is really, really difficult to do.”
Those Who Didn’t
On the other hand of Chastain needing nearly all 600 miles to win the race was the stories of the two drivers who led a vast majority of the laps while he was charging forward in William Byron and Denny Hamlin.
Specifically, Byron led 283 of the 400 laps and swept all four stages. Chastain led the final six laps. Byron got caught in the dirty air behind Joey Logano, fighting to stay on the lead lap, and just didn’t make the right defensive positions.
“I’m frustrated, obviously; just lost the race, so it’s frustrating,” Byron said. “I wish I had won it. He was catching me, and I was trying to defend. He had a run down the frontstretch, and I tried to protect against that, but it was too much. There was a moment I got loose in 3 and 4, I was able to hang on but lost momentum, and that’s what gave him the run.”
And yeah, he was a little frustrated in real time with Logano.
“He was doing the usual,” Byron said.
His big points day did allow him to retake the championship lead over teammate Kyle Larson, who crashed out earlier in the race.
Hamlin seemed like the most likely challenger to dethrone Byron at the end, passing him at least once in the final two stages, but an issue with the second fuel can during his last pit stop left his 15 laps short of the finish.
“No fuel came out of the can,” Hamlin said. “… I saw that it got plugged in, but there was no fuel in the can, or there was nothing going into the car.”
Hamlin was told around the 20 to go mark.
“Once they told me that I was short on fuel, at that point I kind of stopped chasing the 24,” Hamlin said. “Just because I’m not going to risk trying to get in the fence when I’m too short on fuel anyway.”
Tyler Reddick tagged the wall a few laps before Hamlin ran out of gas but it didn’t draw the caution that would have made the issue moot.
“It certainly would have helped,” Hamlin said of a caution. “We would’ve all came back in (to pit) and at least rerack there.
“I just wanted to see that last run kind of play out. “It was still a great finish, great race anyway, and it’s fun battling up front. Nobody could lead because everyone would get too loose. My car was better in second [place] but fast enough to lead. But once I led, it was too loose, so we were just back and forth and obviously put on a great show.”
Hamlin finished 16th, a fourth straight result outside of the top-15, due to mechanical failures and now a fueling issue.
“I feel good about our performance,” Hamlin said. “I feel crappy about how we finish. That’s been the story of the last month, and not much has changed.”
As for whether the issue was a mechanical issue or an execution one, crew chief Chris Gayle wasn’t sure yet.
“Don’t really know yet,” Gayle said. “It could be a little of both. We need to investigate that part of it but it definitely, for the amount of time we were plugged in, combined between both cans, we were way short the fuel we thought we should get.
“So we’ll have to look. There could be a lot of things that could restrict that flow or cause a problem, you know.”
Gayle actually knew it within a lap of Hamlin leaving the pit box but didn’t tell his driver in the hopes they would catch that caution.
“At this point in his career, it made sense to leave him out there as long as I could because I don’t care about seventh or eighth place, when we have an opportunity to win, right,” Gayle added. “We get plenty of those. We needed a caution before we had to go pit and I just wanted him focused on making lap time knowing we wouldn’t have to tell him until 15 laps or so until he was going to run out.”
