NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — Ross Chastain’s night in the NASCAR All-Star Race nearly ended before it was halfway through. A mid-race collision had snagged his No. 1 Trackhouse Chevrolet, and crew chief Phil Surgen told him to feel out the damage. Keep running if the car’s pace felt intact. Park it if not.
Forging on turned out to be the better outcome, giving Chastain a realistic chance at All-Star glory.
Chastain came back for a third-place finish, improbably rallying from contact in the 113th of 250 laps Sunday night at North Wilkesboro Speedway. The rally put him within sight of the decisive battle for the eventual win, one that Christopher Bell grabbed from Joey Logano with nine laps remaining. Those two held on to place 1-2 after their fender-scraping duel, a situation that Chastain was eager to join in the closing laps.
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“I am so thankful to have a shot,” Chastain said post-race on pit road, all while a rowdy bunch of fans who gathered at the catchfence chanted his sponsor’s name to get his attention. “I mean, we were spun out backwards. I was watching the tow truck drive up to me, trying to get it started and burned a set of tires right there with five laps on ’em, knowing that was going to put us at a deficit later — not even knowing if the car would roll. The (steering) wheel is off, so it definitely hit something on the left side, and whatever it did, it didn’t affect it too much. So, yeah, just glad that we had a shot. Those two needed to hit each other just a little bit harder for me to go get a million.”
Chastain’s race hinged on that on-track altercation, which came shortly after a Lap 100 break in the action. His No. 1 Chevy was on the high side in what became a three-wide contest for eighth place with Austin Cindric and Alex Bowman. The trio squeezed off Turn 2, and Chastain’s car and Cindric’s No. 2 Ford took the worst of it, with Chastain skidding to a halt near the pit-road entrance.
That slide forced the No. 1 crew to change tires, costing the team a set of fresh Goodyear rubber from its allotment. Two more caution flags flew — one for Brad Keselowski’s Lap 176 crash and another with the special promoter’s yellow that was added to this year’s All-Star format. Surgen opted to go with fresh tires on the first of those two cautions, so when the promoter’s flag flew on Lap 216, the No. 1 team had little choice on their strategy the rest of the way.
“It was unfortunate getting spun there but in the end, it kind of forced our hand to stay out at that last caution because we lost a set of sticker tires in the spin,” Surgen said. “Caution came out at like (Lap) 175 and we put our last set of stickers on, and we were pretty much forced to stay out after that. Had we had taken rights with the field there, I think we probably would have finished a few positions worse. So sometimes it works in your favor. We got the car a little bit better throughout the race. I think some of the damage may have actually helped the drivability there at the end, but yeah, it was nice to rally back.”
Backward as it may seem, the ground Chastain gained came after his most eventful moment. Chastain had started third and faded to ninth by the Lap 100 intermission, but kept pace with the front-runners once he righted the car after his backstretch shunt. Staying out after the promoter’s yellow gave him another track-position boost, and he held on, even with a battle-scarred car.
“I went backwards at the beginning of the race, and then I went forward after the crash, so I’d kind of settled into a spot where I thought I was going to be and then I got spun out,” Chastain said. “And from there, like, we took off, and I was behind the field on purpose, because I thought the rack was flexing or something in the steering. And then we got going, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m just as fast as these guys,’ and I started passing them. I just love passing cars, and with my wheel all out of whack, and knowing my left side’s all torn up, we passed cars tonight.”
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Surgen said the No. 1 team would determine the full extent of the damage later. He said his initial hunch, though, was that a toe-link might have been slightly bent in the mid-race stack-up.
Though the car bore some of the wounds from a competitive short-track clash, Chastain secured a top-five result by adjusting on the fly. It’s a trait that Surgen says he’s grown to appreciate.
“That is characteristic of him. He’s always adapting,” Surgen said. “You get those moments to reset and just play with the cards you’re dealt. He’s good at that, and he was able to make something out of it at of the end.”