Ross Chastain on his misunderstood Talladega move, tipping culture and more: 12 Questions

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Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: Ross Chastain of Trackhouse Racing, who finished second last week at Texas Motor Speedway and is currently 11th in the NASCAR Cup Series point standings. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity, but the full version is available on the 12 Questions podcast.

1. What was one of the first autographs you got as a kid, and what do you remember about that moment?

The first one would be the doctor on my birth certificate, right? (Laughs.) Probably Randy Fox, the late model driver at Punta Gorda Speedway. He used to throw out frisbees to all the fans and the kids. I remember getting stuff from him, and then I got to race against him when I got older.

2. What is the most miserable you’ve ever been inside a race car?

Homestead 2017, the Xfinity Series season finale. I got real sick going into the weekend and went to get some IVs right before the drivers’ meeting. They gave me two one-liter bags, and it made me feel good, but then I had to pee. The sickness was taken care of by the fluids, but the urge to use the bathroom was bad.

That was right at the beginning of stage cautions, and I had to go. I just remember the feeling of racing and having to go to the bathroom, and then I went under the caution. Only time it ever happened.

That’s the only time you’ve ever peed in the car?

Yeah, yeah. I had never been so thankful for a caution. We weren’t even slowed down yet and it was already happening.

3. What is your most recent memory of something you got way too competitive about?

DAP (NASCAR’s Driver Ambassador Program, which awards points for doing promotional work and interviews and pays out from a fund worth millions of dollars.)

I was already doing a lot of this stuff; now there’s just points involved. So yeah, I’m competitive. I’m putting in the work, and it helps me, it’s self-serving. But I put effort into traveling and trying to promote races ahead of time. Not just always during the weekend, but traveling out a week or two ahead of time to a market. We do that on our own, and now there’s just a real, incentivized way to track it.

So now I don’t feel so bad about asking you for an interview.

I don’t think this counts.

It does.

Look at me. Look at me! I didn’t even know it. I’m here on my own goodwill.

4. What do people get wrong about you?

Some people think I still live in Florida. I’m down there a lot, but I’m in North Carolina so much.

Do you have good frequent flyer status?

Oh, the top at American. And we do a lot of charter flights with the team planes, and I still have (top commercial status).

5. What kind of Uber passenger are you, and how much do you care about your Uber rating?

I don’t care. I don’t even know where to see the Uber rating, actually. But I would love to just ride in a car everywhere. If I could just get up and ride to Chevy in the morning or Trackhouse instead of driving, I could definitely get more done and focus on the phone calls I’m on.

Where do you see your rating? (Chastain opens his app and looks it up.) Oh, 4.92. Do you tip? I don’t.

You don’t tip, and you still have a 4.92?

I paid to ride in the car. Do you tip when someone grabs you a water out of a cooler, like if you just get a drink at a restaurant or something?

If they put the screen in front of me, I feel so bad. “Just answer one question.” I seize up.

What if it’s like 82 cents? You’re just getting a drink. What if you grab it yourself, set it on the counter, they ring it up and then it asks if you want to tip?

It depends if I can do it without them seeing.

(Laughs.) Oh my gosh! You’ve gotta stand up to the tip. It’s a whole thing. Nope.

6. This is a wild-card question about a current topic related to you. At Talladega, you blended up to try to break the momentum of the pack that was coming on. (Hendrick Motorsports crew chief) Rudy Fugle was among those who praised it and said you sacrificed for Chevy and you did exactly what Chevy would have wanted. Then Denny Hamlin said it was BS racing, the kind of move that should be black-flagged. Can you clarify why, as the last Chevy in line, it was important for you to make that move or shed some light on that?

Well, the intention was to get picked up by that line. They were going faster than I thought. So if I could do it again, I wouldn’t do it — because the 77 (Carson Hocevar, a Chevrolet who was leading the Toyota line) was coming faster than I thought.

From there, yeah, I knew it was going to be self-serving to Chevy. I mean, there were Chevys in front of me, only one behind me and then a bunch of others. But that wasn’t top of mind; the thing was just get picked up by the 77 and lead that line. I just didn’t realize they were going as fast as they were.

Oh, so everybody made huge assumptions based on your actions then.

That’s common. People think that I think more than I do. I’m out there racing and reacting. That was not a (spotter) Brandon McReynolds call to move up. It wasn’t pre-planned by Chevy. There was no like, “Oh, the back Chevy will block them.”

“People think that I think more than I do,” Ross Chastain says of his controversial Talladega move. “I’m out there racing and reacting.” (Sean Gardner / Getty Images)

7. This is my 16th year of doing the 12 Questions, and I’m going back to a previous interview that we’ve done and seeing how your answer compares. In 2018, the question was: “If you get into someone during a race, does it matter if you apologize?” At the time, you talked about how you always try to apologize no matter what, even if a person doesn’t want to hear it and you had even been told to lose their number and never call again. Seven years later, does it matter if you apologize now? And do you still try to apologize after various incidents?

No, I don’t try after every one. (Laughs.) It’s about intent. If I feel like I did something with the right thought but I just executed it badly — which happens a lot — it’s just situational now. It doesn’t do anything when people reach out to me. It’s just racing. I don’t want to sound like I don’t care, but I know what happened. I know what the intention was; I can usually tell. So if they reach out, I’ve already moved on to the next week. We have 38 races.

I do care a lot, but someone talking to you about it after? We’re all grown men, and we know we’ll do something a little different next time. I’ll give them a little more room, or they’ll give me a little more room. I’ve got guys out there right now who give me a little more room based on stuff that’s happened and it’s appreciated, and I’m doing it for other people.

8. Other than one of your teammates, name a driver for whom you would be one of the first people to congratulate them in victory lane if they won a race?

(Ryan) Preece. Would be his first one, so that’d be big.

What’s the relationship between you two?

We were teammates down in Gaffney (S.C., at Johnny Davis Motorsports). He did just a one-year tour down there and then moved on. But yeah, we used to own a shifter kart together and would take it out to the go-kart track and stuff.

9. How much do you use AI technology, whether for your job or your daily life?

I have the free app (for ChatGPT) and instead of hitting Safari and typing it in if I have a question, I’ll just throw it in ChatGPT now. But that’s the extent of it.

I’ve seen engineers, they’ll be in a meeting and if a topic is being talked about and they don’t understand something, I’ll see them type it into ChatGPT and then they’re reading through it. I saw one guy answer the question based on what he read off of ChatGPT and people in the room thought he knew it. But he had just read it and formed his own thought based off of that. I was sitting there with him and he was like, “Hey man, gotta use the technology for your own good.”

10. What is a time in your life you felt was really challenging, but you feel proud of the way that you responded to it?

DC Solar (when he lost his Chip Ganassi Racing ride due to the team’s sponsor getting indicted and shut down). Initially, I was probably not very proud, because I didn’t handle it very well for the first couple weeks. But that happened in the third week of December; on Jan. 2, 2019, I got in my truck and drove back to North Carolina. It took me until Jan. 2 to grasp it and decide, “No, I’m gonna go keep doing this.”

Once I got back to North Carolina, I walked back into CGR and the entire shop that was coming back from the break — from the upper management to the shop floor and everybody in between — would go out of their way to say, “Hey, you’re going to be back in a race car for us.” Even though it took several years. In 2019, I wasn’t. In ’20, we did run the 77 car for two races out of there with Spire. And then in ’21, I was back in the car full-time in the Cup Series.

And it took all those people. They would literally put their arm around me and say, “Hey, you’re gonna drive one of these. You’re gonna drive a Cup car next for us.” And it took a while, but we got it done.

11. What needs to happen in NASCAR to take this sport to the next level of popularity?

I don’t know. Out of my expertise.

I thought you were going to say you’re doing your part out there …

Well, it definitely needs to be exciting. And if a block in Turn 3 at Talladega that does not involve a crash and involves a half-dozen cars slowing down for one car merging incorrectly? If that’s the most exciting thing that happens at a superspeedway race, we are probably not doing our jobs. When I got done and I realized and grasped people were talking about my block, I was like, “Wow, that really was a boring race.”

12. Each week, I ask the person to give me a question for the next interview. The last one was with Ryan Preece. He says: Why does watermelon taste sweeter when it’s cold, even though the sugar content does not change?

I don’t know that I agree with that. They taste the sweetest off of the ground in victory lane (after Chastain smashes them, in his post-win tradition). So he should try that. And I am pro other people smashing watermelons when they win.

So imitation is the sincerest form of flattery if somebody else does it?

I’ll send them a watermelon if they want to do that. Right now, they’re coming from our family farm. The watermelons we have are from my brother and dad’s field. We harvest for a little under two months. We did it last year at Darlington in the truck race. …

But what Preece was saying, I like them better at room temperature or really straight out of the field (after) they’ve been out in the sun is actually where I like them the best.

Do you have a question I can ask the next person? It’s Kyle Larson.

(Chastain asked for more time to think of a question.)

(Top photo of Ross Chastain last month at the Darlington Cup Series race: James Gilbert / Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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