5 drivers best suited for a NASCAR-IndyCar crossover

NASCAR/IndyCar crossover candidates: Dark horse – Ross Chastain

Ross Chastain has made headlines for a wide variety of reasons in the last year or so, ranging from several run-ins with fellow competitors, including Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson, to a video game-like move that saved his championship hopes.

But behind all these run-ins is an extremely talented driver, who, much like the other drivers mentioned on this list, is extremely versatile and can compete for wins just about anywhere. Last year, Chastain won two races, one at Circuit of the Americas and another at Talladega Superspeedway.

With the IndyCar schedule being extremely diverse and requiring a lot of driver versatility, the options for Chastain are aplenty.

Outside of the Indy 500, which would be at the top of just about any driver’s list, events at venues such as Long Beach, Texas Motor Speedway, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, and World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway could suit Chastain well.

Chastain has already shown interest in running IndyCar one day, and while it wasn’t something he may necessarily want to do now, it is still certainly on his radar.

As stated earlier, in both NASCAR and IndyCar, it is becoming easier and easier to find a ride for a one-off race. In IndyCar, multiple teams add one-off entries for the Indy 500, thus giving drivers who aren’t running full-time in the series the chance to compete. Arrow McLaren, Andretti Autosport, and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing all entered extra cars in the race this year.

At the moment, it may be difficult for Chastain to generate a lot of interest, due to his recent incidents in the Cup Series, but should he clean those issues up over the next few years, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see he generate some interest within the IndyCar paddock.