During the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season, Ross Chastain was a lightning rod of attention seemingly every week.
Emerging from relative obscurity, he was either winning, wrecking, or feuding with another driver – sometimes multiple things at once – and then to cap it all off, he pulled off the most insane on-track move the sport has ever seen to advance to the Championship 4.
In the years since then, though, Chastain's No. 1 Chevrolet has quietly sunk back into the middle of the pack.
But it's not because he has forgotten how to drive.
This season has proven that even if the results don't show it, the "Melon Man" is still one of the most talented drivers in the sport.
During Sunday's Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway, the popular narrative was all about how hard it was to pass. Don't tell Chastain, though, who qualified 35th, yet slowly and methodically sliced through the field to finish seventh. He gained a total of 32 positions under green, 14 more than the next highest driver.
In nine races in 2025, Bristol marked the fifth time Chastain has scored a double-digit positive pass differential. Overall, he ranks fifth in the series in the statistic, trailing only Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Christopher Bell.
Pass differential is an excellent indicator of raw skill because it only measures each driver against those with whom they are racing, largely equalizing any equipment advantages or disadvantages.
That explains the real reason behind Chastain's "decline", which is the fact that his Trackhouse Racing team has lost a step. After meteorically rising to become one of NASCAR's elite organizations in only their second season back in 2022, something seemed to change around midway through the following year, immediately following Chastain's run-in with Hendrick Motorsports' Kyle Larson at Darlington Raceway.
It has been speculated that Rick Hendrick, who owns the flagship Chevrolet team, urged the manufacturer to dial back support of Trackhouse Racing's operation following the incident.
This has been especially seen in the performance of Chastain's teammates, Daniel Suarez and Shane van Gisbergen. Suarez also enjoyed a career year in 2022, setting personal highs in top 10 finishes, laps led, and points, while earning his first win at Sonoma Raceway, but he has not replicated those numbers since.
Van Gisbergen, the Kiwi road racing ace, has had a rough introduction to full-time Cup Series action and sits 34th in points out of 36 full-time drivers thus far in 2025. Suarez isn't much better, sitting in 27th.
Then there's Chastain, solidly inside the playoff picture in 11th. He hasn't led many laps or seriously contended for many wins, but he's doing the most he can with a team that simply isn't maximizing his capabilities. Despite still carrying a polarizing reputation among many fans, he has become one of the most underrated drivers in the Cup Series garage.