MADISON, Ill. — Five thoughts after this weekend’s NASCAR race at World Wide Technology Raceway (formerly known as Gateway) near St. Louis…
Ross Chastain has been the breakout star of the season so far, often driving what appears to be the fastest car every week for the emerging Trackhouse Racing.
But Sunday’s race is one he’ll be thinking about for a long time, all while hoping the fallout doesn’t come back to bite him later.
Chastain clashed with Denny Hamlin and Chase Elliott and also had contact with Michael McDowell, Joey Logano and others. Elliott immediately retaliated and Hamlin spent the remnants of his ruined race trying to troll and harass Chastain without actually wrecking him.
“I was just way off on my driving today,” Chastain said. “Running into people is not acceptable at this level. I cannot believe, standing here right now, that I just made so many mistakes back-to-back. It’s one thing for one (mistake), but I just absolutely drove over my head today. It’s unacceptable.”
Chastain, who is well aware of how these things work in NASCAR, said he knows apologies won’t fix anything and “I’ll have to pay for it on the track.” He criticized himself for continuing to make mistakes even after having time under yellow flag periods to take a deep breath and reset.
“I deserve everything they do” in retaliation, Chastain added.
He won’t get any arguments from Hamlin, who vowed payback for a time when Chastain has more at stake than just an eighth-place finish.
“Obviously, he wasn’t shy after our contact,” Hamlin said. “There’s no sense of conscience there that says, ‘Maybe I’m going a bit aggressive.’ He can make any decision he wants to, honestly. He’s his own guy and he’s been very successful doing what he’s doing. But ultimately, this sport is self-policing. Usually when you least expect it and when it means the most is when it comes back around.”
While Chastain’s postrace self-awareness deserves credit, he’s having the type of season that needs a big-picture approach to avoid creating bad blood. As with Logano in the past and with the Elliott/Kevin Harvick incidents last year, we’ve seen how feuds can impact a driver’s championship hopes or end a playoff run prematurely. It’s not worth it for Chastain to create enemies this summer and then hope it doesn’t come back around this fall.
When Hamlin is talking about how “you’ve got to fence these guys hard to get their attention” and “you’re going to have to weigh the odds of the right time to make sure they get the message,” that’s not great. Chastain can only keep his fingers crossed Hamlin gets revenge before the playoffs and Elliott considers the matter settled after Sunday.
On the flipside, Chastain absolutely made the race from a fan standpoint. The clashes were some of the most entertaining of the season so far and it made the racing not even matter in the moment since everyone was focused on what would happen next. And of course, the NASCAR media, podcasters and SiriusXM Radio got another gift of content to last the week.
So that’s the dichotomy of such incidents in NASCAR: Chastain is a hardcore racer who doesn’t care about such things and will have an unpleasant week in the spotlight, all while fans eagerly await the next chapter of the ol’ soap opera on wheels.
There was a sense of nervousness over how World Wide Technology Raceway would handle the sold-out crowd of 57,000 people for its inaugural Cup Series race. The track required fans to have a pre-purchased parking pass and, with only one way in and out from the highway, an epic Kentucky-like traffic jam seemed possible.
“We’ve seen this before where the track gets an influx of people for the first time like they’re gonna have this weekend and the roadways aren’t prepared and we have a lot of traffic,” Elliott said Friday. “If I was a spectator, I wouldn’t want to sit for hours in traffic leaving this thing or be late getting in. We had that issue in Nashville. We had that issue at Kentucky years ago. So I hope we’re prepared this weekend and we’ve learned our lesson there.”
Thankfully, it seemed the track got it right. Aside from normal traffic, there didn’t seem to be any hint of social media outrage over parking screw-ups or delays arriving or leaving.
One reason, from this view: The track provided tons of things for fans to do both before and after the race.
As early as five hours before the green flag, the popular racing personality Kenny Wallace brought back the old “Speed Stage” concept with host John Roberts and other special guests. Some fans arrived early just to make it in time for Wallace’s show on the midway, and the crowd ballooned by the end of the event.
Afterward, the track had another concert as part of its “Confluence Music Festival” (which stretched over the course of the weekend) and helped alleviate the postrace traffic as a result.
The fan midway was also packed with stages and vendors — though the concession lines looked excessive — and provided attendees with a way to stay occupied in the hours before the event.
“This whole city, this whole track did an absolutely phenomenal job preparing for a race,” Hamlin said. “The whole thing is first class. I definitely believe we have a future here.”
Those elements might sound simple, but you’d be surprised at how many tracks feel like a ghost town on the midway and leave fans wondering how to fill their time before and after a race. It’s a far cry from the days of dozens of merchandise haulers and the large fan displays brought by Sprint and others.
Gateway also figured out a way to construct a fan walkway that essentially was inside the garage (only separated by bicycle fencing) and an infield fan area with temporary tents and structures.
The facility is certainly aging and is not up to modern day Cup Series standards like you’d see at a Daytona, Las Vegas or Phoenix. But the track did the best it could with its current footprint and the sold-out crowd seemed to enjoy the day as a whole, which is something Kentucky messed up on its first weekend and from which it never recovered.
“The track did a tremendous job promoting the event,” Logano said. “You see the billboards on the highways. They were ready. They did a fantastic job. And I think that’s something we shouldn’t just look past because they promoted it correctly.
“They had good racing and they cared about the racing as well. And then they had good entertainment when there wasn’t racing. They had concerts, they had Nelly last night. It makes for a fun weekend for fans to be here. So home run on every department, if you ask me.”
It might be time to look at adding more practice back to the NASCAR weekend schedules.
The traditional three-day race weekend format vanished with COVID, and no one really missed it at first. For years, those in the NASCAR industry felt spending three full days at the track — with three hours of practice plus a qualifying session — was excessive.
One-day shows with no practice or qualifying at all became the norm to get through the pandemic, but this year brought a new format: Most weekends are a two-day event with a brief Saturday practice session immediately followed by qualifying, then the race on Sunday.
But the new event at Gateway meant a three-day weekend because the Cup series needed more time to feel out the track, so there was a 50-minute practice on Friday and then a standalone qualifying session on Saturday. That was a welcome development for drivers and crews, who prefer a session that allows them to actually make adjustments and experiment rather than just roll off the hauler and hope the setup is perfect.
Brad Keselowski, now a team owner as well as a driver, made the case that increased practice is better for everyone — even the teams that were, in theory, supposed to save money on travel by having one less day at the tracks.
“We’re saving a little bit of money with hotel rooms and rental cars for sure, and that’s nice,” Keselowski said. “But when you just turn around and reinvest it all in engineering or destroyed race cars because you’re blowing out tires and things like that, your net is not an improvement.”
Tire problems have been a theme this season because teams are all running lower air pressures than recommended by Goodyear in order to find speed. If they follow the guidelines, their cars would be noncompetitive. They essentially have to push the limits in that area.
But when the teams go too far, the tires blow and often result in wrecked race cars. More practice could allow teams to understand the loads at each track rather than simply use simulation and hope it’s accurate.
For example: Three Hendrick Motorsports cars had flat tires in practice on Friday, then made adjustments during the session and never saw an issue for the rest of the weekend.
“Cup racing (with the previous car) had really matured to a point where we were going to racetracks and having zero cautions and nothing was happening,” Keselowski said. “Now we can’t run more than 20 or 30 laps. There’s got to be a happy spot in the middle somewhere — a full tire run is good every once in a while.
“A lot of that (caution) stuff is a product of not getting the practice to get the cars right and being so reliant on all these other engineering tools that, candidly, are never going to be 100 percent accurate.”
Tracks would love to see more practice because it gives an extra day to sell tickets. TV partners seem to enjoy all the content they can get. Fans want to see cars on track as often as possible if they make the trip.
So if owners view it as a wash on the cost, perhaps increased practice time could be an added value for everyone. Not that it needs to go back to the original format, Keselowski said, but there’s “probably some kind of compromise.”
“We went from this extreme of three or four hours of practice, three-day weekend, we’re here way too long — to this other extreme of a 15-minute warmup, can’t really work on the cars most weeks,” Keselowski said. “There’s a happy spot in the middle and I think we should be working to find that.”
As we now know, the Next Gen car races well on intermediate ovals and not so great on short tracks. With Gateway falling into the shorter track category in the eyes of race teams (they compared the 1.25-mile track to the 1-mile ovals of Phoenix and New Hampshire), there were concerns Sunday’s race would be lackluster.
Thankfully, the track took enough rubber to widen the groove and allow cars to race a bit more than anticipated. It wasn’t spectacular, but it also wasn’t awful and there were certainly some memorable moments.
But that doesn’t mean the problems at the smaller ovals have been fixed, and there’s much hand-wringing over what to do about places like Bristol and Martinsville, which are so important to NASCAR’s soul (as well as the playoffs).
“The biggest thing is just the dirty air problem,” Cole Custer said. “When you get within a couple car lengths of somebody and you’re three-tenths (of a second) faster, you’re not going to pass them.”
Two upcoming tests at Martinsville offer hopes of a solution. The spring race at Martinsville was a massive disappointment that caught most in the garage by surprise, so any improvements would be welcome.
Kyle Busch believes the problem lies with the aerodynamic devices on the car and said he’s been “highly politicking to take all of the underbody off and let us go make a couple runs and see what we can figure out with that.”
“It would also save the team owners a heck of a lot of money if we trashed those components and went on without them from here on it,” Busch said. “It wouldn’t hurt my feelings.”
Other drivers expressed hesitation about being able to solve the issues, saying they weren’t sure if removing elements like the diffuser would actually help anything. As Logano noted, “you’re never going to get rid of dirty air in racing, period.”
The difference this year, he said, is the symmetrical cars leave a wake of that disruptive, dirty air on both sides — like a boat in the water. But the previous car was angled enough that the dirty air was mostly coming off the right side; poking a headlight out on the left side would help a driver find clean air and pass.
“If you’re directly behind the car, it is more intense than it’s ever been,” he said. “… I don’t know if there’s really a clean, true answer to fix it. You can make adjustments and probably make it better.”
Drivers have also said the shifting at Martinsville allowed anyone to overcome a mistake or bobble and maintain position, whereas before it would have resulted in a pass.
The shifting “removes a penalty, if you will, for when you miss the corner,” Tyler Reddick said. “You can just downshift and be wide open and drive back up off the corner.”
If NASCAR can eliminate the shifting at Martinsville, Denny Hamlin said, “the race will be 50 percent better right off the bat and they don’t have to change anything.”
As a former Portland resident, I was a bit misty-eyed for NASCAR fans in the Pacific Northwest because of Saturday’s Xfinity Series race. During my brief time living in the Rose City, I realized there was a group of passionate race fans who were drastically underserved — and after more than 20 years, they got to see a NASCAR national series race in their area again.
Portland NASCAR fan Nicole Chipman has said the Pacific Northwest is “NASCAR Siberia.” It’s tough to grasp just how disconnected those fans can feel from NASCAR, but living 10 hours from the nearest racetrack (Sonoma) will do that to a person.
So to see NASCAR give the PNW a chance, even with an Xfinity race, was a great reward for those fans’ loyalty. The teams certainly took a hit between the tiny purse, high fuel costs and loads of wrecked race cars (thanks, Turn 1!), which isn’t ideal. But the experiment might turn out to be a boost in the long run.
It’s not like you see a ton of racing gear in Portland or Seattle, but Saturday’s crowd showed there’s clearly enough support in the region for NASCAR to make it a regular stop. The grandstands looked packed from TV and at-track photos, despite being a miserable rainy day that could have kept fans away — and this for a race that had no Cup Series regulars or huge star power.
But what about Cup? Would it be worth bringing NASCAR’s top series out there?
I don’t know if Portland International Raceway itself is the answer due to a lack of infrastructure. It would take a major investment to get the facility Cup-ready. But there aren’t many great options in the region, and IndyCar’s Portland races have shown there can be temporary suites, grandstands and hospitality areas built to accommodate more fans.
Perhaps to offset the cost for teams, NASCAR could do a “West Coast Road Course Swing” where Portland and Sonoma go back to back. The tracks are far enough apart that it wouldn’t take the audience away from either (for perspective, St. Louis and Charlotte are only 100 miles further from each other than Portland and Sonoma).
Either way, PNW fans made a statement they’re hungry for more NASCAR and would support whatever they can get. In a time when other areas of the country are oversaturated with racing, the fan support on Saturday made the best case yet for a Cup race in Oregon or Washington.
(Photo: Sean Gardner/Getty Images)