Worst To First: Chastain Charges Late For Coke 600 Victory

CONCORD, N.C. – Ross Chastain smashed both a watermelon and William Byron’s heart with his late-race heroics in Sunday night’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Chastain powered his No. 1 Jockey Chevrolet past Byron’s patriotic – and dominant – No. 24 Chevrolet in turn one with six to go, then held the Charlotte, N.C., native at bay the rest of the way home with a master class in defensive driving.

Leading only eight laps all night, including the final six circuits around the 1.5-mile quad-oval after his race-winning move on Byron, Chastain stole the Bruton Smith Trophy from the hometown hero in an improbable display.

It marked the sixth win of Chastain’s NASCAR Cup Series career and his first in one of stock car racing’s crown jewel events.

That meant a lengthy Polish victory lap was followed by an exuberant celebration – complete with his trademark watermelon drop at the start-finish line.

“Holy cow, we just won the World 600!” Chastain exclaimed as a sold-out crowd cheered around him.

“To drive on that final run in this event and pass two cars that had been way better all night … that’s what it’s all about as a driver,” he added. “We just stayed in it. It’s unbelievable right now.”

After Byron controlled NASCAR’s longest race – sweeping the first three stages and leading 283 of 400 laps – it was Chastain who found an extra ounce of speed in his race car when the chips were down.

The eighth-generation Florida watermelon farmer and driver for Justin Marks’ Trackhouse Racing team chased down Byron following a late cycle of green-flag pit stops, making himself larger and larger in the two-time Daytona 500 winner’s mirrors in the closing laps.

Finally, as Byron closed on a slower Joey Logano and a lapped Denny Hamlin charged in from behind with fresher tires, Chastain found a gap to go for and made a dramatic move stick.

Carrying momentum out of the double dogleg on the frontstretch, Chastain shot through the middle lane in turn one as Hamlin wrapped the bottom and Byron tried to fade high to build momentum on corner exit.

It allowed him to slide up across Byron’s front bumper right as the banking spilled onto the backstretch, forcing Byron to either lift and cede the position or risk wrecking them both in the fight for glory.

In the end, Byron cracked the throttle enough to keep from slamming into Chastain’s rear bumper, but once he was behind in dirty air he couldn’t recapture the mojo that he’d used to dominate the night.

That allowed Chastain to race home to a .673-second victory at the checkered flag, snapping an 18-race winless drought at NASCAR’s top level dating back to Kansas Speedway last September.

Chastain actually pitted two laps later than Byron in the final pit cycle, giving him a bit fresher tires in crunch time, but the story of his Coca-Cola 600 started Saturday afternoon when he crashed his primary car in turn four during practice.

That forced the team to build a backup car overnight, sacrificing sleep and some shop workers’ days off to get the job done. After officially starting last in the 40-car field, Chastain repaid all their efforts with an exhilarating triumph.

“When I left the shop last night, I went over and sat in this car for the first time. It was about 10 o’clock when I left. The team worked until 2:30. They were back at 5:30 this morning,” he reflected. “Most of them drive 30 to 45 minutes home, and might have gotten a little shower, I think … I don’t even know if they slept. But they got this thing ready, and that’s the kind of dedication that the Trackhouse culture creates.

“For about an hour and a half we thought we were going to have to fix the primary. That would have been fine. But NASCAR said, there was something bent too much on it, so we had to go build another one, and we did,” Chastain noted. “How I drove through the field tonight was just staying in it. I didn’t get too happy when I was passing cars, but I also didn’t get too sad when we caught that first green flag cycle on the wrong side of it.

“My team built me a bad-fast car and had my back all night. This was everyone’s effort that led to this.”

Byron’s runner-up finish marked the second race this season – after Darlington (S.C.) Raceway in April – where he swept the stages and led more than 200 laps but failed to claim the checkered flag.

He did, however, earn a field-high 65 points and assumed the series lead over Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kyle Larson by 29 at the midway point of the regular season.

Polesitter Chase Briscoe was third ahead of A.J. Allmendinger and Brad Keselowski, with Chase Elliott, Michael McDowell, Christopher Bell, Ryan Preece, and Noah Gragson closing out the top 10.

The other three storyline drivers playing major roles in Sunday night’s book all failed to earn representative results for various reasons.

Hamlin led 53 laps and was Byron’s fiercest competitor from halfway through the middle of the final stage, but his team didn’t get the No. 11 Toyota full of fuel on the final pit stop, forcing the 2022 Coca-Cola 600 winner to make an extra pit stop from third place with 12 to go.

He ended up 16th after unlapping himself a few laps from the checkered flag.

Reigning rookie-of-the-year Carson Hocevar lined up third to begin the final stage and had challenged for the lead late in stage three, but suffered an engine failure in turn one on the lap-308 restart that eliminated him at that point. Hocevar was credited with 34th.

And after flying to Charlotte off a DNF in the 109th Indianapolis 500, Larson saw the second act of his Memorial Day Double end behind the wall as well. He led 34 laps early, but suffered a setback in the form of a lap-42 spin exiting turn four.

Larson was later collected in a multi-car crash on the frontstretch at lap 246 that destroyed the right rear of his No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet and ended his night, leaving him 37th in the final rundown.

Sunday night’s Coca-Cola 600 took four hours, 25 minutes, and eight seconds to complete at an average speed of 135.784 mph. Eight cautions slowed the pace for 52 total laps.

The NASCAR Cup Series heads next to Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway, where Chastain won in 2023 and Logano triumphed last season in quintuple overtime.

Broadcast coverage of the Cracker Barrel 400 is slated for Sunday night, June 1 at 7 p.m. ET, live on Prime Video, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.