Drama caught up with NASCAR in the very first race of the 2024 season. Monday’s Daytona 500 had one too many incredible moments and perhaps the biggest of them all were the ones including Ross Chastain. The Trackhouse Racing star was particularly aggressive in the final stages of the event and spoiled his chances at victory when he crashed into Austin Cindric attempting to make a pass that would’ve leveled him with race leader William Byron.
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Discussing his ambitious and yet dangerous maneuvers on “Motorsports on NBC”, a panel that included Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte dissected his moves and provided their verdict that he wasn’t in the wrong. Burton said that from the perspective of a spectator, Chastain could be deemed to be at fault. However, from the driver’s perspective in the cockpit, not so much.
He took the example of the final lap crash and said that Chastain had made the best decision [to pass] he could in the little time he had. His words were, “Was it the right decision? Obviously, it wasn’t. But when you look at it from the driver’s point of view, it’s a completely different perspective than when you look at it from the overhead.”
He continued, “There’s a Daytona 500 win on the other end. That’s why he made the move. I don’t fault him one bit for making the move.”
Steve Letarte seconds Burton’s opinion in further support for Ross Chastain
Building up on Burton’s words, former Hendrick Motorsports crew chief Steve Letarte analyzed the move and voiced his thoughts. He said, “If I have a driver in the Daytona 500 and they don’t make that move, even being wrong, what are we even doing? What are we here to do? This is the required move!”
Letarte’s take was that the opening that Chastain was too little but that did not put him in the red lane. He added that he would have been the first to criticize Chastain had he made an unwarranted maneuver that threatened to harm the field and that this wasn’t one of them. “I thought that was a Daytona 500 winning move that didn’t work and I am 100% in support of it,” he said.
Chastain, in typical fashion of his, refused to be portrayed in the wrong light for the incident. He was completely content with having given a shot at winning the Daytona 500.
