Chastain shoulders blame for rough day at Charlotte Roval

Ross Chastain shouldered the responsibility of his Trackhouse Racing team not advancing in the NASCAR Cup Series postseason after multiple mistakes Sunday at the Charlotte Roval.

Chastain had a chance to be in the final transfer spot coming to the finish with a one-point advantage over reigning champion Joey Logano, but the Trackhouse driver went for it all in the final chicane, having been told that he needed to pass Denny Hamlin for position. Instead, he wrecked himself and Hamlin. In doing so, Logano and others drove by at the finish line and sealed his fate.

“Get to the No. 11,” Chastain said of the final lap. “They said I had to be in the front of the No. 11. So, I did what I had to do to be in front of the No. 11.”

The gap between Chastain and Logano was the story of the end of Sunday’s race. Chastain passed Logano for 13th position with 11 laps to go, which put him two points behind the Penske driver in the standings. Logano, however, was called to pit road by crew chief Paul Wolfe on that same lap as the No. 22 team bet on fresh tires.

Chastain was eight points ahead of Logano with six laps to go. The gap shrank over the final laps as Chastain went backward in the running order and Logano started to move forward. In the final two laps, Chastain lost positions to Todd Gilliland and Hamlin.

A tie between Chastain and Logano would have gone to Logano. The move on Hamlin in the final chicane was for the 18th position, while Logano ran 21st. After the spin, Chastain drove across the finish line backward, but he had been passed by Alex Bowman, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and finally Logano, putting him four points behind the final transfer spot.

“They were innocent bystanders in it,” Chastain said of Hamlin. “Whether he knew (the point situation) or not, I don’t know, but I would hate to be in that position. Well, the past speaks for itself that I’m aware of my surroundings, and I am sorry to them. Sorry to Denny. Sorry to JGR and his whole team. They were definitely innocent bystanders.”

The finish capped off a day that had unraveled early on. Chastain gave up his track position under the caution at the first stage break when he missed making the left-hand turn off pit road. NASCAR put him to the rear of the field because he came to a stop and had to back up to rejoin. He crossed the exit line of pit road fifth but was put back into 30th position.

In the final stage, he was called for speeding. It came on his final pit stop with less than 30 laps to go.

“The whole body of work was not good enough today, but then we got to the last lap with a shot, and I just needed to keep those cars behind me, and I missed Turn 7,” Chastain said. “Another unacceptable, unforced [error]. The No. 11 wasn’t even close to me, and I downshifted unnecessarily into first to make sure I turned the corner and I slid the rears and let him drive right by me. There were three big errors that took us out. We were fast enough to transfer.”

Sunday's mistakes will spin in Chastain’s head, he said, until he gets back to work at Trackhouse Racing on Monday morning. At the finish, despite trying to get the car across the finish line as quickly as he could in reverse, he knew his postseason was done, having seen Logano and others drive by.

“I single-handedly took a car out of the Round of 8 and a chance to go to the Round of 4,” he said. “In two months, we’ve elevated ourselves from I’d say an 18th-place car to an eighth-place car, and today we were good enough to run top five, and I took us out of that. We should have been cycling around the top five all day, and the pit strategy would have flipped us around, but those moves are the only reasons we’re not in the Round of 8. It’s all on me.”