Well, Ross Chastain did it, and did it without driving anyone into the wall. Chastain has had speed at Nashville in the past and he took his pole position and stayed out front much of the race to grab his first win of the season.
Last week I noted the drivers to watch as Denny Hamlin, Martin Truex, Jr, Christopher Bell and William Byron. Oh, and some melon-tosser named Ross Chastain.
Hamlin led the second most number of laps at 81 had a Stage 2 win and ended in P3. MTJ led 50 laps and finished P2. Bell was P7 and Byron P6. Also of note, defending Nashville winners Kyle Larson was P5 and Chase Elliott P4. Both Hendrick drivers struggled with top speed but had enough to make it a “good points day.”
Chastain managed to channel his aggressiveness and talent to pilot his machine to lead 99 laps including the final 34 where he stayed just ahead of MTJ through lapped traffic. Seeing Chastain win on an intermediate track where he stayed out of trouble and had the speed he has had for many weeks can’t be a good feeling for the rest of the garage. At this point in his career, Chastain might actually be finding the right mix of talent and equipment to make a serious run at a championship.
The race featured a lot of side by side racing as drivers searched for speed all over the track. It also featured a lot of long green flag runs with the main caution brought out for Ryan Blaney on a restart on lap 147. A slow jump at the front of the field stacked everyone up and Kyle Busch sent Blaney and himself into the infield. While Busch straightened his car out, Blaney couldn’t and wound up hitting the inside wall in what he called “the hardest hit of my life.” That inside wall is not a SAFER barrier and probably should be. NASCAR said it will look into the matter of course but the track should do the right thing and make that wall SAFER. There is really no reason that any track should have walls that are not SAFER barriers in today’s racing. NONE.
Things of note: Playoff points are getting tighter
MTJ still has the overall points lead but is ranked second in the playoffs behind William Byron. Chastain is third in points and fourth in his playoff ranking.
Chase Elliott is still mired in 25th and just proves that for as many good points days as he can have, he has quite the hill to overcome to make the playoffs on points. He is currently -64 for the final playoff spot. His biggest threats to advance are Alex Bowman, AJ Allmendinger, Austin Cindric and possibly Michael McDowell. He would need these four to have abysmal luck the next 9 races as he would need to “top five” his way into 16th place. I think it is safe to say he is in a must win situation for the rest of the season.
Next up: Chicago
One of the most anticipated races of the past couple of years is the first-ever Cup street race. Chicago is going all out with bands and a huge festival around the race. It will feature 12 turns with 7 of them sharp 90 degree turns including Turn 1 which is a sharp left hander that will see cars dive bombing each other for track position before entering the 90 degree right hand Turn 2.
If the cars can make it through these two turns without half of them crashing we might see a decent race. With that many sharp turns and passing at a premium, it will be a long day for drivers in the pack. There are only two gentler turn areas and that is between Turns 2 and 5 and then the chicane between Turns 8 and 10. This track is more like Watkins Glen than Sonoma so you have to watch drivers like Kyle Larson, AJ Allmendinger, Elliott, Bell, Tyler Reddick, MTJ and McDowell for their road racing chops. You also have to look at Joey Logano who has a history of finding ways to win at inaugural events like this.
My sincere hope is that this race is phenomenal and not a giant crash fest as drivers lose their minds in all these sharp turns, which I fully expect at some point in the race — especially at the beginning and end of the race and pretty much every restart. Which is a good reason to not have Stage breaks at this track.
Keep the shiny side up folks!
(Photo by Andrew Coppley/HHP for Chevy Racing)
