Chastain looking to improve grades at Bristol

BRISTOL — Ross Chastain was blunt when asked how he would grade the season so far for himself and the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing team. Chastain is 19th in the point standings with one top-five and five top-10 finishes in 25 races. He was officially eliminated from the "Chase of the Championship" after a 36th-place finish Sunday at New Hampshire. His grade was an "F" for him and teammate Connor Zilisch. Their other teammate, Shane Van Gisbergen, who has two wins this season and is still fighting for a Chase spot, gets a passing grade. "Yeah, we failed. Not making the chase is a failure for us It absolutely is for Connor and I at Trackhouse," Chastain said Wednesday at Bristol Motor Speedway before the upcoming Bass Pro Shops Night Race. "There's just no way around it. The resources are there. The funding is there.. We have the workforce. We have Chevrolet helping, and other Chevys have made it. If I could sign up again and re-do this year, I would to try to make better decisions along the way." Chastain, who greeted many social influencers at BMS on Wednesday, hasn't had the greatest success on the high-banked short track. He has a best finish of sixth and only three top-10 finishes in 12 Cup Series races at the "World's Fastest Half-Mile." Still, Bristol gives him a thrill unlike anywhere else that NASCAR races. "Just driving the race car around here by it myself in practice is high heart rate," he said. "I get arm pumped in practice that first run on track for the weekend, and it just never gets old. As the spray activates around the bottom, we go faster and faster with more laps at the beginning of practice. The G forces, like that sensation of speed, is high for as short as the track is, and I love it." His first time at Bristol was as a fan. He grew up in South Florida, an eighth-generation watermelon farmer. His parents have a cabin in Western North Carolina, and the summer late summer vacation included a trip to Bristol for the Night Race. While he talked about the sensation of Bristol, there's something a little different about the Bass Pro Shops Night Race compared to the Food City 500 in the spring. "The Cup cars don't spark as much as O'Reilly cars or Trucks do, but race cars at night, you can see every little bit of a brake glow and the exhaust on the Cup cars," he said. "I think that seeing those flames, the color change in the brakes, you just see most of the field sparking, driving as hard as they can." Chastain explained it's something that a person needs to see live just like a big football game where the quarterback throws a Hail Mary or a running back goes through a hole to score or the sound of helmets cracking. With the race cars, it's the sound of the engines when they're coming off turn 4. Chastain was also talking to ETSU students with a message about racing, raising watermelons and driving safety that he has given to those at Science Hill and Sullivan East High Schools. He emphasized the importance of wearing their seatbelts. He mentioned that he clicked the seatbelt on his Chevy Silverado pickup before driving to Bristol from the Charlotte area. He recalled his worst crash in a NASCAR car at Auto Club Speedway in California. He credited the safety innovations following the fatal crash of Dale Earnhardt for saving his life. In that California crash, Chastain hit the wall at 140 mph and he bounced off at 70 mph after impact. He also recalled having an image of the late Dolly Parton on his race car the year the iconic singer hosted the ACM Awards. When it comes to the family business, Chastain talked about what to look for in a watermelon, which he said takes 100 days from the time it's planted to transport. "Buy it at Food City. We've sold to Food City through the relationship we built at the race track," Chastain said. "We work with 26 family farms to send year-round. Look for three things in that bin, look for Melon 1, those our watermelons. Then look for a symmetrical shape, not one point at the end, pick up different ones, go for the heavier one. The bottom should be yellow. That's the ground spot where the farmer has left it on the ground long enough."