{"id":183552,"date":"2025-08-29T01:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T01:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/183552\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T01:30:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T01:30:11","slug":"ross-chastain-points-to-biggest-weakness-of-the-no-1-team-heading-into-the-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/183552\/","title":{"rendered":"Ross Chastain Points to Biggest Weakness of the No. 1 Team Heading Into the Playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

While other teams are touting their strengths heading into this Sunday\u2019s NASCAR Cup Southern 500 playoff opener at Darlington Raceway, Ross Chastain is more concerned about whether his Trackhouse Racing<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s No. 1 car and team have any glaring weaknesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll start with the weakness, because it\u2019s the easiest one,\u201d Chastain said during media availability this week in Charlotte. \u201cIt\u2019s just, are we going to be fast? Are we going to roll off the truck fast for practice at Darlington?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd are we going to be able to stay fast on lap10 of that run, lap 20, lap 30, and transfer that through into qualifying for one lap, and then back to long run for the race? That\u2019s the ultimate question for Trackhouse, in my mind is, can we go fast? And if we can do that, can we execute?\u201d<\/p>\n

Chastain considers Darlington<\/a><\/strong> as his favorite racetrack on the Cup circuit. Even though he\u2019s never won at the 1.366-mile, egg-shaped oval, he\u2019s held his own there with three top-fives and four top-10 finishes in 12 starts.<\/p>\n

Chastain on a roll in his last four races at Darlington<\/p>\n

He\u2019s been exceptionally good in his last four starts at the home of the Lady In Black, with two fifth-place finishes, a seventh and an 11th place showing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my favorite track,\u201d Chastain said<\/a><\/strong>. \u201cIt\u2019s just absolutely top of my list. Whenever I look at tracks that I want to win at, and I want to work to be better at, Darlington is it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been through an incredible learning process since I first drove on that track of how to drive it and getting a Cup win there is absolutely top of my list.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interestingly, in those last four races, Chastain has led just three laps, that coming in this race last year. He almost won the spring 2023 race at Darlington. He led 93 laps and was battling for the lead when he was involved in a wreck with five laps to go, finishing a disappointing 29th.<\/p>\n

And one year before that, again in the spring race, he led 26 laps before his day ended two-thirds of the way through due to another crash. Overall this season, Chastain<\/a><\/strong> has one win (Coke-Cola 600 at Charlotte), three top five and ten top 10 finishes.<\/p>\n

After a rough five-race patch between the second Atlanta race and Indianapolis, when he finished 30th or worse in three of those races, Chastain has rebounded of late, including a 10th at Watkins Glen and 11th at Iowa, along with a 19th at Richmond and 15th this past Saturday in the regular season finale at Daytona.<\/p>\n

He will need to pick up his performance in the first three playoff<\/a><\/strong> races, Darlington, Gateway and Bristol, if he hopes to advance to the Round of 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While other teams are touting their strengths heading into this Sunday\u2019s NASCAR Cup Southern 500 playoff opener at…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":183553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-183552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115109470132812072","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}