Ross Chastain capped off a “perfect” race weekend, hitting all the right notes in the Music City to earn the winner’s guitar trophy in Sunday’s Ally 400 at Nashville Superspeedway – his first NASCAR Cup Series race victory of the season, a day after claiming his first career pole position.
But before hoisting his new guitar, the 30-year old Chastain had a watermelon to smash – his trademark victory celebration – a nod to his family’s multi-generation watermelon farm in rural Alva, Florida. And the sold-out Nashville crowd – home to his race team owner Justin Marks — roared with enthusiasm for the long smoke-filled victory burnout he did in front of the grandstands to his enthusiastic melon drop.
“This is incredible,” a grinning Chastain said. “This is why every little kid out there, anyone in the world, when you get criticized and you’re going to if you’re a compet itor, they will try to tear you down and you’ll start believing it and you can’t do that. Go to your people. Trust in the process. Read your books and trust in the Big Man’s plan upstairs. And just keep getting up and going to work on it.
“A lot of self-reflection through all this, but I had a group that believed in me and they didn’t let me get down,” he said of his challenges in 2023.
Chastain certainly proved his resilience and his faith in the process. He led early Sunday and then led late – thanks to incredibly fast pit stops from his Trackhouse Racing team helping position him for the race lead on the final round of stops of the night.
It’s the first race win of 2023 for Chastain, who led the championship standings for seven weeks early in the year, and the first win of the year and first pole position ever for Trackhouse Racing.
Ultimately Chastain had to hold off Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin by 0.789s for the win – leading a race best 99 of the 300 laps, including the final 34.
Lapped traffic was a factor for Chastain to overcome all night. He lost his early race lead to Tyler Reddick after Noah Gragson raced Chastain hard trying not to be lapped. There is a history between Gragson and Chastain, who had a physical confrontation at Kansas Speedway in early May. Reddick went on to win Stage 1 after Chastain was unable to clear Gragson easily, but Reddick – who started the race alongside Chastain on the front row — spun out on pit road on a caution shortly thereafter and ultimately was not a factor for the win.