It might be a good thing that Ross Chastain blew a tire during practice ahead of the longest Cup Series race on the calendar – the 2025 Coca-Cola 600 – because it forced his team to build a winning car overnight. He backed his No. 1 Chevy into the fence on Saturday, totaling it before it saw one lap of green flag racing. His crew worked all night to get a backup car built, but the No. 1 Chevy team’s work didn’t stop there. Chastain took the green flag from dead last, with a hell of a fight ahead of him across 600 miles of racing.
As soon as the green dropped, Chastain got to work. He methodically picked off his competitors, one after one, on a mission to get to the front of the field. All the while, a fellow Bow Tie Brand racer held down the top spot. William Byron’s team unloaded a blisteringly fast No. 24 Chevy, enabling him to lead 283 of 400 laps.
Byron looked like a shoe-in to win – outside of the No. 11 Toyota TRD Camry of Denny Hamlin, who never strayed far from Byron’s rear bumper. The two traded the lead back and forth as the grueling race neared its zenith, until a costly mistake from Hamlin’s crew forced him to pit in the closing laps. That opened the door for Chastain, who lurked in third while Byron and Hamlin duked it out.
With six laps left, Chastain struck. He dove below Byron heading into Turn 1 on Lap 395, quickly sawing his wheel back the other way to slide in front of the No. 24 Chevy. Chastain let his No. 1 Chevy have its head, stretching his lead to 0.673 seconds when the checkers dropped.
“When I left the shop last night, I went over and sat in this car for the first time,” Chastain said. “It was about 10 o’clock when I left. They worked until 2:30. They were back at 5:30 this morning. Most of them drive 30, 45 minutes home. A little shower, I think. I don’t even know if they slept. Back there at 5:30. They get this thing ready, and that’s the dedication it takes from [team] Trackhouse. There were people there that had their Saturdays off yesterday, and they came in.”
He added, “To drive on that final run in the [Coke] 600 and pass two cars that had been way better all night … Holy cow, we just won the 600!”
It’s worth noting that Chevy driver Kyle Larson, who attempted to race in both the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 to complete 1,100 miles of racing in a single day, unfortunately failed to do so after wrecking out of not one but both races. He finished 27th at Indy and 37th at Charlotte.
Comments
Great race for the WATERMELLON Man!
Big bummer! Didn’t get to see it, because you needed to have a paid subscription for some channel I will never pay to see a nascar race on tv. Never had to do in past! I guess I’ll have to watch more golf!
1. It was on Amazon Prime, not a TV channel.
2. NASCAR races have been on pay walled channels for at least 15 years now. Like FS1 and NBC Sports.
It sure was Unfortunately Fox5 NYC Are, another unfortunate Spectrum AKA/ Rectum, Because the Suck also, Power out on and off
I went to the Chevy dealer on Monday after watching the race. The dealer told me they didn’t have a car like the one that won the race.
I told them I thought they were a Chevy dealer ! They tried to sell me a Chevy Trax instead, said it was a nice vehicle from Korea.
I asked if it had the same motor that lasted all those laps and he stated it didn’t it had 3 cyl turbo motor like my lawn tractor. I told him I didn’t need another lawn mower and left.
I suppose you walked into a Toyota store and asked for a V8 Camry next?