Ross Chastain calls Trackhouse qualifying pace unacceptable

Looking at the final results, Ross Chastain is in the middle of a pretty good stretch of four top tens in the last five races, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. He nearly won at Texas, finishing second, though that came after scoring zero stage points because he started back in 31st. Unfortunately, that’s not an outlier.

The pattern continues as he finished seventh at Bristol, but started 35th. Another seventh-place finish at Darlington came from 25th on the grid. From 17th to sixth at Martinsville, 19th to fifth at Las Vegas, and three consecutive qualifying efforts outside of the top-30 right now — that’s more than he had in the entirety of the 2024 season.

It’s making things a lot more difficult for the No. 1 team on Sundays and after a runner-up finish at Texas, it was at the top of his mind. “Just no confidence in the car yesterday,” he said last weekend. “Y’all saw that. Just the speed of the Trackhouse cars on Saturdays is just terrible. We’re just not confident, all three drivers.” 

The battle from the bottom

Chastain has echoed those comments in nearly every media appearance he has made this week, including a recent appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.

“Just because we were good last week doesn’t mean we’ll continue to be good,” said Chastain after calling into the show. “I’m tired of having to pass so many cars. I just want to show up like every race car driver and have the car closer. We’ve just been off. I mean, it’s no secret. We’re not sugarcoating it to ourselves or anybody, and that’s not always been my MO to talk about it. l’ve always been a glass-half-full guy, but I mean, just consistently qualifying in the 30s and (it’s) all three Trackhouse cars. Daniel [Suarez] has been leading the charge in the mid-20s, and that’s just not acceptable for what resources we have.”

He says the team is working hard to rectify the lack of speed when offloading from the hauler. And with so little practice time in modern NASCAR and how difficult it is to pass at most places, failing to fire off well can easily derail your entire weekend. 

“We are working, and I believe we will get that turned around. We’re still going to have off days on Saturday, but consistently, we just need to see some light at the end of the tunnel. It’s pretty dark on Saturday right now.”

Chastain spent years driving lower-tier equipment as he fought his way up the NASCAR ranks, driving from the back often and it’s not lost on him that he would have been thrilled with these showings in the past. “But we’ve elevated ourselves at Trackhouse and with Chevrolet to a spot that we’re not okay with struggling at any part of these weekends, and especially when it’s continual and it’s just repeated — I’ll say failures on Saturday. We’re not going to stand for that.”

Chastain has the seventh-best average finish among full-time drivers this year at 13.5, but only nine full-time drivers have a worse average starting position than him (23.5), and two of them are his Trackhouse Racing teammates. The organization has never been the best qualifying team on the grid with just three poles in total since 2021, but both Suarez and Chastain are having their worst showing yet since joining Trackhouse in regards to average starting position.

The good news for Chastain is that NASCAR heads to Kansas Speedway this weekend where he is the most recent winner, capturing the checkered flag there last fall.