Getty Ross Chastain before Iowa race.
Ross Chastain has four career NASCAR Cup Series wins to his credit, all in the last two seasons with Trackhouse Racing. In those two previous campaigns, the No. 1 driver had already earned a victory by this point of the season, the halfway mark.
Through 2024, the watermelon farmer’s overall numbers are down compared to 2022 and 2023 (in both top 5s and top 10s) and he has yet to make a trip to Victory Lane. Before the June 23 New Hampshire race, the driver was asked to grade the first half of his season and he was candid in his assessment.
@RossChastain grades the No. 1 team’s first half of the 2024 Cup campaign.
“Oh gosh. I’m really bad at this,” Chastain admitted. “I tend to grade myself down. For me, I’d give myself a C minus, maybe. But for team overall, B. Yeah, it’s been a little better lately.
“It might have been in the Cs two weeks ago, but we’ve gotten the 99 and the 1 car both similar in speed and that’s the most important thing, and then we can go forward from there. But we had to at least get us where Daniel (Suarez) and I could see each other on track. Because that wasn’t the case for a while. So, yeah, overall I’d give us a B.”
Ross Chastain Admits Dreams Have Come True
Ross Chastain is different than many Cup drivers. He doesn’t come from a racing background. As has been well-documented, his family history is raising watermelons. Now 31, he was asked what he would have told his 10-year-old self about racing and life.
What would @RossChastain tell his 10-year-old self about life and racing?
“Ten-year-old Ross had no idea racing was even an option,” he said. “I had never raced at all. I was 12 years old, almost 13 when I ran my first laps on a racetrack. So, maybe 12-year-old I would start there and say, ‘all the dreams are gonna come true.’ I mean they were just dreams, they were.
“There was no plan. We didn’t have like an idea of how to make this happen. But I just put racing in front of everything else, and my family did as well. It’s all worked out.”
Chastain Talks Pairing Family Business With Racing
While it’s all worked out and racing is Chastain’s top priority today, his passion for his family’s business is still quite evident in much of what he does at the race track, including smashing watermelons after each win. He acknowledged that he’s made it a point to integrate the two.
“Well, it’s the exact reason you’re looking at a very bright orange fire suit that I’ve got on with Kubota,” he said. “It was a desire for my dad and I to have Trackhouse find us a tractor sponsor. We wanted to bring ag everywhere we go. And obviously you see watermelons being the focal point of that, but Kubota’s here because we’re farmers.
@RossChastain talks about how he has combined his family’s history in watermelon farming with racing.
“Busch Light is on my car because we’re farmers. And I can’t trade that. I would never trade that. But ag has not always been the greatest career or life to be in. But it’s worked out very well for some of us and to be a small part of the population that feeds the rest of the world, it’s really cool.
“It’s scary at times, but it’s what I know. So, I know way more about ag than I know about racing. I’ve made my career into racing, but ag is what I wanted to be when I was a little kid, just like my dad, my granddaddy, everybody before them. And, yeah, it’s the most natural thing I can talk about.”
Ross Chastain Has Plan for Ending His NASCAR Career
As Chastain admitted, all of his dreams have come true. He is very much enjoying the present, racing cars, and doing so competitively, on Sundays. How long does he want the dream to last?
“My goal is to be in the current spot, like in a competitive Cup car for 20 years,” he said. “That was my goal once I got into the Xfinity Series. I thought if I ever got to Cup, I wanted to be there for 20 years. So this is year four of that. We’ll see what happens.”
If he races in Cup for 16 more years, he’ll be 47 when he walks away. It’s certainly ambitious, but it’s also hard to doubt someone who has already proven when he sets his mind to doing something, he can achieve it.