Ross Chastain off to strong start to NASCAR Playoffs: ‘I think we’ve got a shot’

Ross Chastain's return to the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs got off to a rousing start one week ago at Darlington Raceway with a top-five finish. But the journey to that fifth-place result was, well, a journey in itself. All are part of the process at Trackhouse Racing. Last year's inaugural run through the Cup Series postseason produced plenty of learning moments for Chastain, crew chief Phil Surgen and the entire No. 1 Trackhouse team. MORE: Full Kansas schedule | At-track photos "The biggest thing that stands out is what I can control," Chastain told NASCAR.com in a Thursday teleconference. "And last year, I could have controlled not crashing at the (Charlotte) Roval. It was a simple mental error. It was a lack of awareness and attention to my driving. And I got loose in Turn 2, the pit-out chute, and hit the wall and broke the right-rear suspension, and that could have very easily taken us out of transferring to the Round of 8. So that's what stands out. You just can't afford to have that." Of course, not only did the No. 1 Chevrolet advance through to the Round of 8 -- he rode the Martinsville Speedway wall all the way into the Championship 4. These days, he's more conscious of the positions in which he's placing his car, capitalizing on opportunities in front of him but rarely overstepping. "People are going to crash. We saw it at Darlington," Chastain said. "I'm super proud that my car might have been the only playoff car without right-side damage. I had some left-rear (contact) from the 5 (Kyle Larson), but not not anything on the right side. Didn't touch the wall all weekend. "That's not to say that Lap 1 of practice I couldn't drive into Turn 1 and hit the wall at Kansas, OK? Like, I'm not getting too far ahead of myself at all. I'm not in Kansas yet, so I can't control that. But I'm proud of that, because that's something that I focused on for these 10 weeks is to minimize that and eliminate it as much as possible. There's just no room for it." There's also pride in the No. 1 team's recovery from a rough start to last weekend's Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, where he fell off the lead lap early but rallied to a fifth-place run -- his first top five since his win at Nashville Superspeedway on June 25. That run positioned him 10th in the 16-driver playoff grid, currently 13 points above the provisional elimination line. RELATED: Playoff standings "We didn't start the race or the weekend at Darlington how we wanted, but man, like just give us 500 miles of a Cup race and we'll have a shot," Chastain said. "And that's what we had, right? Maybe if we had the Southern 600, we might have won it. But you know, we were just too far off to start and it just took too long to get up there, so we missed out on a lot of opportunities. But still proud -- I mean, like, so pumped that we were able to do that, because it just doesn't happen much anymore." The result was a product of trusting the processes Chastain and Surgen have built over their past three years together, Chastain said. The two began working in tandem in 2021 when Chastain took over the No. 42 Chevrolet at Chip Ganassi Racing. When Justin Marks purchased CGR's shop and charters to transition them into the Trackhouse Racing fold, much of what was the No. 42 team became the modern-day No. 1 team. The environment inside Trackhouse this year -- with Chastain in the playoffs and teammate Daniel Suárez not -- is admittedly different than it was a season ago when both teams qualified for the postseason. "There's no way around it. We know it," Chastain said. But Suárez showed strength at Darlington before a late-race dustup with Alex Bowman that eliminated both of them from contention, a sign of the shared mindset within the Concord, North Carolina, race shop. "The 99 (Suárez) was just as fast at Darlington as they would have been if they weren't in the playoffs," Chastain said. "So I am totally confident that they're going to continue to just help us and we're going to help them. We're still keeping our same processes. We're still going about the business of bringing rocket ships to the race track, just like he was in the playoffs or if he's not; if I am in the playoffs or I was not." Up next is Kansas Speedway, host of the Hollywood Casino 400 set for Sunday afternoon (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App). Since the Next Gen car debuted in 2022, Chastain has finished seventh, seventh and fifth in three Kansas races. Chastain noted the similarities between the 1.5-mile Kansas and 2-mile Michigan International Speedway -- both smooth, both wide, D-shaped ovals. Chastain's qualifying efforts at both tracks year: third at Kansas, second at Michigan. "Kansas is just wide," Chastain said. "Like really, my only policy for what lane I don't run in Kansas is the lane somebody in front of me is in. I just go wherever they're not. And that might be lower, that might be higher than I'm planning on, but the only rule I have is don't follow them because there's enough lanes to find my own. So through the corner when we're all packed up, it's really just about the car right in front of me and finding some clean air." For now, Chastain enters Kansas with another chance to chase the coveted NASCAR Cup Series Championship. "I think we've got a shot," Chastain said. "That's all we asked for. We just asked for an opportunity."