There are no superlatives that are superlative enough to describe what Ross Chastain did at Martinsville Speedway during the Xfinity 500, but I will try: No one has ever sent it more. No one has ever gone more flat-out than Chastain. If you don’t watch NASCAR but have ever played a video game you will recognize the desperate move, though I’m not sure this even works in a video game.
Here’s some context from Yahoo! Sports:
Chastain went from 10th to fifth on the final lap of the race by intentionally driving his car into the wall at full speed. He accelerated against the wall through the entirety of Turns 3 and 4 and passed five cars so that he would have a chance to win the 2022 Cup Series championship in the winner-take-all title race at Phoenix on Nov. 6.
Christopher Bell won the race and advanced to the final four with Chastain, Joey Logano and Chase Elliott. Chastain’s move on the final lap eliminated perennial title contender Denny Hamlin. Hamlin was in the final four ahead of Chastain via points until the final two corners.
You follow that? This is the last race before the championship and the only way to get in was for Chastain to get ahead of Denny Hamlin in two turns. The only way to do that was to slam the damn thing against the wall. This Twitter caption tells the story fairly well:
The car in the wall beats all the rest pictured ???? Martinsville needed this pic.twitter.com/G1JQDddcvG
— Storm Lee Kelly (@Storm_L_K) October 30, 2022
Is this allowed? I’m no expert, but it seems to be not-not legal. This is of the “There’s nothing in the rulebook that says a giraffe can’t play football” variety of interpretation.
Denny Hamlin, in the purple-and-blue-and-white #11 Camry is the person who would have been in the final four. Here’s what Hamlin says in the in car:
“I guess we just lost on that…”
Chase Briscoe, who was further back, got a great shot of it and had this reaction:
“If I’d have known that had worked I’d have just done that for the last eight laps.”
Fred Smith, Road & Track’s Motorsports Editor, has perhaps the best take:
I propose a two-step solution:
1. Ban the move so 25 cars don't do it on the last lap next Martinsville race
2. Build a statue of this moment outside the track and call it the "Ross Chastain rule." Really play up that it's banned in a good way.— Fred Smith (@FredSmith914) October 30, 2022
Ignoring the irony of Kyle Larson calling a video game move embarrassing, I am reminded of some Canadian wisdom:
They don’t ask how, they ask how many.
If you’re curious, here’s Chastain explaining it himself:
Top photo via NASCAR
Banning this move would be stupid; strict enforcement making abuse too costly to abuse it is the only version that makes sense.
Go watch Chastain’s run. You think it’s EASY to ride a wall like that? It absolutely is not. You do not just “let Jesus take the wheel.” It requires real skill to get into that wall, ride that wall, not spin/flip/wreck on the gaps in the wall (there are gaps,) AND not wreck the much slower competitor in front of you. THAT was what impressed the hell out of me. Right at the end of that run you see Chastain just slam right into the bumper of Brad Keselowski without wrecking him.
Secondly, yes, it gave him a huge advantage on that turn. But at a very steep cost. He did that move knowing that best case scenario (what he pulled off, natch,) would be severely compromised aero. He also could have easily broken the steering, cut a tire, broken a wheel, or caught on fire. (NextGen is trash tier ‘engineering.’ Don’t @ me – season has spoken for itself.)
So if they’re going to make a Chastain rule, fine. Make it strict and to the point:
You can absolutely ride the wall for an advantage, if:
– you do not wreck or interfere with another competitor intentionally or unintentionally, before or after the maneuver (full duration of the race)
Penalty: DNF/DQ, automatic 1 race driver suspension, plus any applicable fines or other penalties
– you do not use it to cause a caution or any other delay of race
Penalty: Lap is incomplete/exclude (automatic 1 lap down,) black flagged, plus any other applicable penalties
– excluding paint, fender, wheel, and tires the maneuver is completed without damaging the car
Penalty: DNF/disqualification plus any applicable fines or other penalties
– the car must be able to, without any form of assistance, exit the track safely afterward
Penalty: DNF/disqualification plus any applicable fines or other penalties
– the car must pass post-race inspection
Penalty: DNF/disqualification plus any applicable fines or other penalties
– prohibited at certain tracks based on catchment fence margin and wall margin, and where walls have been damaged by prior wrecks (upon decision of race control)
Penalty: DNF/disqualification for unsafe driving plus any applicable fines or other penalties
It’s fundamentally GOOD to encourage completely insane seeming, out of the box thinking like that in racing. It only becomes bad when people abuse it. What Ross did was not abusing anything but the laws of physics with balls that defy them. Had he fucked up, forget placing, he wouldn’t have finished the race at all. But if a driver – any driver – can pull that maneuver off safely? Then it should count. Full stop.
But if they can’t do it safely; if they just do it to take the other guy out; if they just smash the car up in a futile gesture of frustration; if they just go ‘full send’ and let the tow truck bring it in? That’s when it crosses the line into being unsportsmanlike and cheating.
If you want to risk a wall ride, you have to do what Ross Chastain did. Ride the wall for a position advantage, do so in a controlled fashion, do it without wrecking or injuring another competitor, exit the track unassisted, and pass post-race inspection. No more and no less.
I would think exactly the same as you, and maybe he was kidding, but in his post-race he said “Once I got against the wall I basically let go of the wheel and hoped it didn’t catch the Turn 4 access gate.”
https://youtu.be/OpMYGye9TLw?t=38
Eh, he literally said “I just let go of the wheel”… I’d say that’s the same thing as letting Jesus take the wheel.
Thanks for actually laying out a ruleset….fun comment!
That said, one big problem with your logic. Safety decisions based on results are not effective because the outcome is often decided by luck. The goal here wouldn’t be to penalize someone IF something goes wrong. The goal is to penalize SO something DOESN’T go wrong. Safety decisions need to be based on risk, not outcome, thus removing luck from the equation.
Think about lug nuts….er, centerlocks (welcome to modern times, Nascar!). They don’t penalize teams IF they lose a wheel from a loose lug. They penalize teams for loose lugs SO the don’t lose a wheel.
Ah yes, the old NFS Underground 2 airport race move
I call it the “Indy Car Racing II-Loudon with damage turned off” move.
Somewhere Richard and Dale are hooting and hollering and laughing their asses off.
Well, Richard Petty is still alive, and he wouldn’t have done something like this because he’s Richard Petty and he never had to.
Dale Earnhardt is probably kicking himself (easy to do when you’re an angel with wings) for not doing this back in the day.
But really, this might not have worked in a steel-bodied car. The fender would’ve crumpled up and caught a seam in the wall, and Chastain would’ve spun. The new poly bodies made this move possible.
Not might, it wouldn’t have worked. Ross would have made it all the way around the corner… with half a car and stopped short of the line if it was a full steel bodied car like the days of old.
Hadn’t thought of this…..also wonder what role, if any, the safer barrier played.
Somebody do the maths and figure out what G force was he pulling.
Looks like somebody at NBC sports heard you:
https://nascar.nbcsports.com/2022/10/31/dr-diandra-explaining-ross-chastains-martinsville-move-ross-chastain/
Hockey puck move.
Don Rickles has entered the comments. Right day for it too!
Look, this is the equivalent of a NASCAR “hail Mary” pass at the end of game. It is really cool when it works. Remember Chastain didn’t win, he just moved from 10th to 5th and fights another week. He proved that in the right case, sheer massive unmitigated horsepower can improve your spot in a race like a MarioCart boost.
Very impressive, yes. But 99.9% of the time this will not a productive move. I can’t see this being a regular race feature. High Risk with tiny potential reward.
FULL SEND
When watching the end of the race yesterday I literally couldn’t believe what I had just seen. I still can’t decide if it was the most brilliant move I’ve ever seen on a racetrack or the most idiotic thing a driver could do. Since it got him into the championship 4 for next week I guess it has to qualify as brilliant.
I’m sure the car owners and crew chief are fine with it since it got the job done and they are moving on to fight for a championship, but just imagine how upset the next car owner is going to be when their driver intentionally wrecks the car trying something like this but falls just a little short.
I saw it watching live on TV also. I’ve never holy-shit-laughed so hard in my life. Unreal to see in realtime.
The very first person to congratulate him was the team owner as Ross climbed out of the car so I’d guess he’s fine with it. Honestly, the car wasn’t torn up the way I’d expect. Had that been earlier in the race, they could have repaired it to continue racing.
Meh,
I used this same move every single day on the guardrails with my AFX/Tyco slot cars in the 1970’s. That was way before any video game was ever invented.
Wait, you mean this was a real race car and NOT just some Tik Tok video?
YES! Slotless cars, the tracks with three contact strips! Centrifugal forces sent them into the wall all the way around the track ! Ah nostalgia.
T C R Total Control Racing!
Hamlin’s spotter sleeping through it until the last second.
NASCAR: the only auto sport were you can get places by not apexing the curve.
Nah, I see people every day at my off ramp taking the apex inside-out, which doesn’t even seem possible. EVERY day.
The problem with making a Chastain Move illegal is that too many NASCAR rules either have Swiss cheese interpretations built in or are applied only when NASCAR wants to, which means current pet drivers/teams get away with stuff that ordinary drivers/teams don’t. It would take a very strict and specific description of the violation to keep it from penalizing Darlington Stripes and inadvertent wall contact.
All that said, I was watching and enjoyed the hell out of Chastain’s move. So, BTW, did the broadcasters and the fans. It was sheer bravado and, best of all, didn’t involve dive-bombing other drivers and putting them into the wall or infield. Not sure I want to see it again, but once was spectacular.
First: BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Now, I gave up on NASCAR when their drivers figured out they could punt the lead car on the last lap without penalty, so this just seems like the next step in the process. If you can hop a curb on a road course, and if you think you can get away with riding the wall like that, what’s the difference? Sure, 3 out of 5 times you’re going to go sliding across traffic and take out half the field or shower the crowd with lug nuts, but, hey, let ’em race, right?
I’m confused by the physics…I would think the friction from all that wall-scraping would be slowing him down, but apparently still much faster than the cars on the track below him?
All about grip. Without the barrier, they can only hold so much speed through the corner before losing grip and sliding up the track. It’s a short track so remember they are braking heavily into the corner. Now bring the barrier into play, pin it to the wall on entry, keep right pedal down, and hope. The loss of grip is a non-factor (the wall is going to do the turning for you) and it is all about how much speed you can carry. In this case the speed he carried in clearly compensated (and more) for the speed he lost from rubbing the wall.
Even set a lap record doing it
Right, slip angle. All of the “traction” of the rear wheels are making the car go forward, none of it is keeping the car from going sideways.
For the sake of safety, they specifically design the walls to be fairly slick. A wall that “grabs” a car and spins it means much more dangerous wrecks than one that the cars slide along on impact.
1. Wow.
2. Wow.
3. That is what you call going all in on a move that literally you only have one shot at…..I don’t mean one shot for that car for the race, I mean one shot. Ever. That was amazing and so ridiculously dumb, unexpected, and dangerous all at once. That will be banned somehow going forward because as noted you can’t have 25 guys sending it that way next time.
4. Wow. Like eating a whole wheel of cheese and pooping in the fridge wow. I’m not even that mad, just impressed. Now let’s never do it again.
First: BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Now, I gave up on NASCAR
Definitely the most epic desperation move I’ve ever seen in NASCAR that didn’t involve punting someone else into the wall. Will they put in a rule to ban it? Maybe. Should they put in a rule to ban it? Nah.
Now that’s a full send maneuver if there ever was one. And what’s that old saying, “If ya ain’t rubbing ya ain’t racing”? He definitely took that saying at face value!
For that matter, “If you no longer go for a gap that exists, you’re no longer a racing driver”.
That gap might’ve been three lanes wide because no rational person would take it, but Chastain took the hell out of it.
I think it was a great move.
I have a new hero.
NASCAR needed this.
Yeah, it’s cool as hell once but we need to add a rule to stop it happening again. Way too many things could go very wrong to let this be a regular strategy.
Yep, Fred Smith’s take is 100 percent. Celebrate this to the fullest, and make sure it never happens again.
Bullshit. This was a SIMPLE matter of running a track at 60 to 90 mph through turns 3 and 4. Not NEARLY as dangerous to anyone as it is to turn or bump draft a guy into the wall at Talladega or Daytona at 200 mph. And they do that shit non stop for 500 miles at a time. This was a well considered, balls out gamble with very little chance of danger to anyone else. Too much hand wringing here friends…(your friend Dale Earnhardt)
Don’t think it is that simple. Think if one of the drivers on the bottom line got spun or lot grip and slip up the track. Now they are getting T-boned at 100+ mph when the average speed through that corner is normally much less. Or if the safer barrier gave enough that Chastain’s nose caught and spun him. Or if next time 7 guys do it and the race ends is a cluster of wrecked cars in 4. Or if someone gets the idea to try it at a mid-size oval. There are a lot of reasons from a safety standpoint, optics, or even cost. Think about how expensive repairs are now going to be to the safer barrier in 3 & 4. Normally, they just replace sections when hit. Now they likely have to replace the whole thing.
Amazing move, but just asking for trouble if you continue to allow it
And you are right, a lot of things aren’t as dangerous as restrictor plate races, but that shouldn’t be the bar to assess whether something needs to be done.
First things first, congrats Ross Chastain on the phenomenal maneuver. I wouldn’t call myself a Chastain fan, but I appreciate him as a driver just a little bit more. With that said, I’m not sure if labeling all wall rides as illegal is the right route to take. Doing what he did should be deemed illegal, but if you need to ride the wall for a few seconds to make a last minute pass, that should be fair game. We’ve seen similar maneuvers in the past which leads to…. Kyle Larson.
What a hypocrite. He attempted the same move on Denny Hamlin of all people last year, only to fail after Hamlin blocked him. To get out of the car and say it looks bad for the sport after being removed from the sport for saying the N-word on a live broadcast and the aforementioned attempt is laughable. Give it a few years, Larson is going to become the next Denny Hamlin/Kyle Busch hybrid. People will hate him, love him, or just want to see him wrecked.
Agree on the fine line here between legal vs illegal.
He acknowledged that he took a huge risk doing this. While he likely didn’t mean “to the other drivers” (which it was), he meant that if it had gone wrong, he could easily have destroyed his car. That potential alone seems likely to keep teams from trying to do something of this magnitude all the time. These ‘stock cars’ are anything but, with a pricetag to match.
I too find Larson annoying and unsportsmanlike. He’s got great skills but really want him to grow up.
Really an amazing move. I say if you allow people to block the other cars from pass even though it’s illegal why ban this? Also could you have spent an extra minute on Google where the video wasn’t a ninth of the screen?
Yeah but he scratched is car all up
Rubbin’s racin’.
There goes his no-claim bonus!
Legal? I mean, it’s perfectly legal in NASCAR to bounce your car off of others or bump someone off track to get them out of the way, so the wall is fair game in my book.
It destroyed the sponsorship ads. Duh.lol
But those sponsors got some fantastic screen time in the process! I think they got their money’s worth…
I was amazed when I saw it, couldn’t believe it was real (esp. since the cameras weren’t on him at the time, they were on Bell’s finish).
I chalk it up to he got loose and tapped the wall just a bit, and that’s when (in a split second) he realized that having already absorbed the initial impact and its directional potential, he could just hammer the throttle and let the wall slingshot him around.
Most exciting thing in an otherwise boring race.