Every time someone wins in sports, someone else gets their heart stomped on. Sunday at the Roval, Joey Logano barely kept his championship hopes alive, while Ross Chastain managed to fumble his away in the most Ross Chastain way possible—by tripping over his own shoelaces.
For most of the afternoon, it looked like Chastain had the upper hand. Logano’s Penske Ford wasn’t setting the world on fire, and Chastain had enough pace that all he really needed to do was not screw it up. Which, of course, is exactly what he did.
First came the pit-road exit fiasco—sliding past the line and restarting 30th. Then, during green-flag stops, he managed to get busted for speeding. A pit-road speeding penalty in a playoff cutoff race is like handing your opponent the gun in a duel.
And yet, somehow, improbably, he clawed his way back. With just over 11 laps left, Chastain was ahead of Logano again. All he had to do was hang on. But Team Penske rolled the dice, bringing Logano in for fresh tires with 12 laps left. That gamble left Chastain stranded on worn rubber and praying for divine intervention.
Instead, he got Denny Hamlin. On the final lap, in the final chicane, Chastain tangled with the 11 and spun. In a moment that will live forever in NASCAR blooper reels, he threw his car into reverse and barreled backward across the finish line. The crowd roared—until Logano slipped past, snatching the final playoff transfer spot by a single position. One man in, one man out.
Logano, who knew exactly how close it was, could barely contain himself:
“We’re still in,” Logano said. “We’re still alive, baby. It was such a close finish there. If you want drama, the playoffs bring it every time.”
Chastain, on the other hand, was left sounding like a man who’d dropped his wallet into a porta-john:
“I would restart the whole day,” he said with a tone that sounded like he just saw his dog get run over by a car. “Just unforced errors. Just terrible. Heartbreaking for almost 200 employees at Trackhouse. Justin hired me to carry this 1 car, and I just completely unraveled our day.”
Team owner Justin Marks didn’t sugarcoat it either, saying his driver had essentially sabotaged himself:
“It was a bit self-inflicted on the 1 team,” he said. “We need to be better on pit road. We need to eliminate the mistakes that were made today so we weren’t in that position.”
And Hamlin? He didn’t even realize he was the villain of the piece until it was too late:
“I wasn’t aware.” He said. “I definitely wish I was aware, but nobody told me. Obviously, I was the guy in the way.”
That’s the cruelty of the NASCAR playoffs. Logano gets to move on, his season somehow still alive. Chastain, meanwhile, is left replaying his mistakes on a mental loop, wondering how he managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
In the end, it didn’t come down to fate, bad luck, or someone else’s dirty driving. It came down to Ross Chastain out-Chastaining himself.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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