Ross Chastain wins with patience as crashes frustrate at Talladega
By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer
TALLADEGA, Ala. — Ross Chastain wasn’t known as a patient driver, so for him to win a race Sunday with patience might not have been as big as his first career Cup victory last month, but it was an important triumph for him at one of NASCAR’s most famous venues.
Chastain won at NASCAR’s biggest oval, Talladega Superspeedway, four weeks after he won at the road course at Circuit of the Americas. In both races, he won with a last-lap pass.
The COTA win came after a rough-and-tumble tangle with AJ Allmendinger in which Chastain lost the lead and regained it in the final turn.
The Talladega win was one in which Chastain held his lane on the bottom, and the two cars in front of him at the start of the final lap moved to the top lane to block runs.
"Ross has spent a number of years in his career fighting for every lap of every race because tomorrow was not a given, that next week was not guaranteed," Trackhouse Racing team owner Justin Marks said.
"My goal was to put him in a position where he didn’t have to do that. ... I told him this year that if he slowed down a little bit for me and just took a deep break and slowed down 5 percent, that we can do great things. He’s now comfortable in his job and comfortable in his skin and understands and knows this team is being built around him."
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Ross Chastain runs past Kyle Larson and Erik Jones on the final stretch to win Sunday at Talladega.
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Here are three takeaways from Talladega:
Patience wins
Chastain has never been considered a patient driver, known more for his aggressive style, which both helped him and cost him wins in NASCAR’s developmental series.
He made a conscious decision to stay on the bottom lane Sunday. In the final couple hundred yards, leader Erik Jones and Kyle Larson both moved to the middle groove. Larson thought Chastain was going to the middle and wanted the push.
Instead, Larson had contact with Kurt Busch, and then Jones lost his drafting help and fell to sixth as Chastain got a push from Austin Dillon past Jones for the win. Dillon finished second, and Kyle Busch, who started the final lap in ninth, was third.
"The patience side, it's hard," Chastain said. "It's so hard. Every split-second decision has to be quick, but also you have to be able to live with the consequences of it.
"I just thought that was my best maneuver, which I never thought that before."
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Bob Pockrass says Ross Chastain's second Cup win is a sign of growth for Trackhouse, but it's still too early to talk about a championship.
It was the second win for Trackhouse Racing, a team that started in 2021 with former driver Marks and entertainer Pitbull as co-owners.
It came with Larson admitting that he made a mistake on the final lap with the move he tried. That is something Chastain has seen before.
"I made the mistake several times in Xfinity cars [where] I moved up or made a move, and [the other driver] went on to win the race," he said.
Jones leaves frustrated
Jones was obviously a little flabbergasted and frustrated with how the race played out. Typically, the leader has to block a move to win the race, and it is likely that if he had stayed in the bottom lane, he would have won the race.
"I saw the top getting some momentum there in [Turns] 3 and 4, and it looked like they had a lot of momentum, and I was getting too far out ahead [in the draft]," Jones said. "I was trying to back up to the 5 [of Larson].
"He got a ride, I tried to defend, and it kind of just opened up the door for the 1 [of Chastain]. ... It’s frustrating to work that hard for 500 miles and comes down to the last few thousand feet."
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Erik Jones describes the philosophy behind his moves on the final lap Sunday and shares his frustration about a sixth-place finish at Talladega.
A couple of big ones
Talladega is known for its crashes as drivers try to block or push, and there was one big crash midway through the race and another on the final lap.
The crash at the midway point occurred when Joey Logano got turned with Bubba Wallace behind him as several cars tried to push in tight quarters.
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Bubba Wallace triggers a major crash by turning Joey Logano on a Stage 2 restart Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway.
"Every time we come to one of these things, cars crash," Logano said about the nature of racing at Daytona and Talladega. "They’re going to crash a lot more before the end of this thing, and hopefully everyone is OK and gets out all right.
"That’s how it works. ... They suck. I don’t think drivers enjoy it. Fans enjoy it, so that’s good."
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Joey Logano says crashes like the one that ended his day Sunday at Talladega are just the nature of superspeedway racing.
Logano, Ty Dillon, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Daniel Suarez and Harrison Burton all had their days end. Dillon said that type of move is OK with five laps to go but not all that productive midway through the race.
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Ty Dillon says he doesn’t understand what drivers were trying to accomplish Sunday by making such risky moves only halfway through the race at Talladega.
The final wreck occurred when Larson got into Kurt Busch, who then came off the wall and hooked Wallace.
No drivers suffered injuries in the event.
Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!