DARLINGTON, S.C. — Though Ross Chastain is on the verge of missing the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, one wouldn’t sense it based on his attitude.
A Championship 4 driver two years ago, Chastain sits 18th on the playoff grid entering the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway – needing to overcome a 27-point deficit.
Pointing his way in certainly isn’t completely out of the question, but as he’ll start 22nd on Sunday, stage points may not necessarily be in the cards. That said, a win may be the more realistic option for the Trackhouse Racing driver.
“I just know the best way that we can ensure it is to win,” Chastain said, speaking to the media at Darlington. “We’ve had opportunities to win the Southern 500. We’ve had opportunities to win a couple of races in the spring and fall here in a different series. That’s my goal. The math says we can do it either way, but my preparation and my mentality – and it’s been this way in Cup since the very first spring race that I came here in 2021.
“I left here that weekend and thought we can win a Cup race at Darlington one day and that thought hasn’t left my mind since.”
Overall, it’s been a season of missed opportunities for the 31-year-old from Alva, Fla. Winning four times over the previous two seasons, the victories have been much harder to come by in 2024.
While he hasn’t been in contention as much, costly mistakes have put him into a points hole. Chastain got taken out by William Byron at Texas Motor Speedway in April, killing a strong points day. He felt like he could’ve won at Nashville Superspeedway earlier in the summer but got wiped out by Kyle Larson on the first of five overtime attempts.
Two weeks later at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway, Chastain simply lost control and crashed, resulting in one of his three DNFs. Lastly, a spin during overtime at Michigan Int’l Speedway resulted in another major points blow.
With his season on the line at Darlington, it’s business as usual. That hasn’t stopped him from thinking about how they’re in this position, though.
“It’s been a fairly normal week,” Chastain said. “We stuck to our same processes that we normally do with the DiL simulator; talking through some options there of different setups and different things we’ve run in the past. We did fit in some extra time.
“This stuff is so hard. I knew that … I knew that whenever I ran my first truck race in 2011 and as I stepped up through the ranks and was in Cup cars here at Darlington, ones that we were just there to run the laps and go single-digit number of laps down … nine or less was the goal. I knew how challenging it was. I also had this dream that it would be a whole lot easier when I had all the funding, the tires, the pit crew, everything. And it has. Definitely. I don’t expect to go laps down anymore. It still happens every now and then, but yeah – I’d say right now, it’s real that we’re in this position.
“If you would have had me fill out a bingo card at the start of the season, I wouldn’t have dabbed this block, for sure.”
Chris Buescher has a 21-point over Bubba Wallace – who’s on the pole – for the final playoff spot. Chastain is six behind Wallace, and any tiebreaker scenario among the three favors Buescher.