“Those Little Things That Eat at Me” – Ross Chastain Looks Back After Falling Down the NASCAR Pecking Order

At one point during the current NASCAR Cup Series season, Ross Chastain had become the talk of the town. Well, not for his on-track antics that had upset far too many people. But the fact that around the Charlotte race weekend, the watermelon man was leading the points standing.

Soon after, the Trackhouse Racing driver fell quiet, with no major on-track altercation nor any good race finishes. In fact, with time, he tumbled down the pecking order down to 7th in the standings after the race at Richmond Raceway. So what went wrong for the Florida man?

Recently, Chastain explained just that raging question. He elaborated on the “little things” that kept chipping away his points advantage over the others.

Ross Chastain speaks about him falling down the standings ahead of the playoffs

Speaking with RACER, Chastain mentioned how they wanted to scrape as many points as possible before heading into the postseason. Although, the fact that he managed to finish below the top 20s in the last four races, including Richmond, didn’t help his points-scoring ambition very well.

Chastain explained, “I liked it better when we were parked at the front of the garage, for sure. We want to just try to scrape up as many points. You can look back at races and see where we lost points and here’s a good example. We lost a stage win just because I didn’t get a good restart and lost the lead, and ran third in the first stage.”

“That would have been really nice to have that extra point, and it was as simple as a restart, spinning my tires, and it’s one point gone and two regular-season points gone. So, there’s always those little things that eat at me, and we’re just trying to minimize those losses and gain as many as we can.”

Can Chastain contend for the Championship this season?

Just last year, Chastain had made it to the championship four race, after pulling off a video game move at Martinsville, eliminating Denny Hamlin in the process. He then went on to finish the 2022 season in the 2nd place behind title winner Joey Logano. Interestingly, at the start of this season, he had been pulling through pretty well.

But when he heads into the playoffs a couple of weeks from now, it is the points game that will matter the most. With Chastain currently languishing in 7th place, he will make it to the postseason, but with a 19 playoff point disadvantage on Martin Truex Jr.

In case Chastain wishes for a recovery from this spot and back into championship four contention, he would have to score a win or at least a few stage wins in the next four races before the conclusion of the regular season.

At the end of the day, as long as he does not end up with mistakes, he should be fine.