What happened was that despite long odds, this actually worked. “… My brain could not comprehend, my bandwidth was shot when I entered Turn 3 and I grabbed fifth gear. “Fully committed down the backstretch, grabbed fifth gear, took my hands off the wheel once I first hit the wall,” Chastain said. The NASCAR version of a Hail Mary was so effective he passed five drivers - Chase Briscoe, Bubba Wallace, Joey Logano, William Byron and, just before the finish line, Hamlin, all in a blink of an eye. He was just actually going that much faster than everyone else, with data showing that the Trackhouse Racing driver entered Turn 3 at least 50 mph faster than he would on a normal lap around the half-mile short track. The visual of Chastain riding the wall looked like someone mashed the fast-forward multiple times. He rode against the wall into Turn 3 through Turn 4, then carried that momentum down the frontstretch, past the checkered flag.īELL WINS! CHASTAIN WITH AN INCREDIBLE MOVE! #NASCARPlayoffs /aFW9YP6PUZ With his hopes of advancing bleak and needing two positions, Chastain shifted into fifth gear, then chose not to slow down as he entered Turn 3 on the final lap in the faintest of hopes that he could somehow pass enough cars to jump over Denny Hamlin for the final transfer spot. I didn’t know if the physics would work to make it around the corner, but it did.
We live by ‘Why not?’ To apply that to the Cup Series in this scenario, there are rules, there are a lot of rules out here. “That’s a motto that some buddies and I have back home.
I want to make that clear.”īut desperate people sometimes do desperate things, and the predicament facing Chastain left him feeling like he had no choice.
“I’ve done a lot of sim work this week, a lot of iRacing, a lot of stuff, laps here virtually, never once did it cross my mind to ever try it. “Our prep this week, it never crossed my mind,” Chastain said.
Yet that’s exactly what happened Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, where desperation combined with a devil-may-care attitude culminated in one of the wildest finishes in NASCAR history. A move that catapulted him into the championship round of the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. Never did Ross think that years down the road - in real life, not a video game - he’d attempt and complete the same type of move.
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