Ross Chastain won two races in each of his first two NASCAR Cup Series seasons with Trackhouse Racing, with 2022 marking a breakout year in which he advanced all the way to the Championship 4 at Phoenix Raceway and placed second in the title battle.
Then in 2024, the driver of the No. 1 Chevrolet came up shy of making the playoffs, though he was still able to make the year his third straight winning season with a postseason victory at Kansas Speedway.
The 32-year-old Alva, Florida native hopes to use the setbacks he experienced during the 2024 season to grow for the future, given the fact that his three years at Trackhouse Racing have now produced a wide range of finishes from second down to 19th place in the point standings.
"I'm always evolving," Chastain told Beyond the Flag. "I lean on Trackhouse and our coaches at Chevrolet to help me deal with all this, and there's definitely a lot more losing than there is winning in NASCAR, so yes, you could look at, there's only one more win in the season that we finished second than there was the season we finished 19th, but the timing of those wins and the times that we ran good versus bad really contributed to that, so we just didn't win early enough in 2024.
"But yeah, it's incredible to win three straight seasons. Five years ago or even just the year before that, if you would have told me that, I would have just probably not believed you, because until it happens in the Cup Series, it was hard for me to see it. I knew I was working towards it, but I couldn't see it. I don't have that like vision mindset that some people have, where they can see the goal they're working towards, and yeah, we want to win earlier this year for sure."
The fact that Chastain's 2024 win came when it did, toward the end of the season, may be viewed as somewhat of a momentum builder for the 2025 season. But Chastain isn't falling for that trap.
In 2023, Chastain closed out the season by winning at Phoenix, even though he was no longer championship eligible. That gave him a ton of confidence going into 2024, and yet he ended up missing the playoffs entirely.
"There's a hard reset," Chastain said about the offseason. "And that's part of that evolution I talked about, where we won at the end of 2023 at Phoenix, the season finale, and I went through the offseason so confident. I thought what we found at Phoenix was just going to translate, we were going to come back and win Phoenix in the spring, and we were going to go win Las Vegas in the spring.
"Those early season races just didn't happen, through a lot of things, but I learned through that to not take those months of the offseason and just think it's all going to be so good. Let's put the work in. So I’ve definitely evolved through that and learned from it. I'm not saying I'm 'doom and gloom', I'm just real about it, a lot more real this offseason than I was the one coming out of 2023."
And that mental shift could play to his benefit as he enters the 2025 season in pursuit of a return trip to the Championship 4 and his first Cup Series title.
Chastain embraces the "off" in offseason
Chastain mentioned that he was able to take some time off and spend it with his family, including during his brother's wedding the week before Thanksgiving. He carried that break over into December and did his best not to focus on anything to do with racing until the calendar flipped to 2025.
"My brother [Chad] got married the week before Thanksgiving, so I was in Florida for that, and took time to be with the family and celebrate him and his new wife Lacy," he said. "We did a bachelor party for him down in Mexico the week before the wedding, so that was fun, with some of his buddies, and we went down there and had a great time.
"I took most of December and spent it at the farm, just stayed out in the woods, away from everybody, and still stayed at my parents’ house, stayed at Chad's house, and I didn't think about race cars, which is challenging. It's impossible for me to do during the season. I wake up every day, and the first thought that pops in my head is my race car, something about it, something that I need to do that day to go faster, or for the business side.
"So I took a good chunk of December and took it off from racing and focused on watermelons and other things that we've got going on back home. But January has been full speed ahead, and it was nice. The first time I stepped back in the simulator, I was excited, and I could look at it with a fresh mindset, definitely different than I did in November."
Trackhouse 'not stopping', says Chastain
Chastain is excited to embark upon his fourth year with Trackhouse Racing, the first season in which the Justin Marks and Pitbull-owned team plan to run three full-time entries.
In addition to Chastain's No. 1 Chevrolet and Daniel Suarez's No. 99 Chevrolet, the team have added the No. 88 Chevrolet for Shane van Gisbergen, who became the first driver to win on Cup debut since 1963 two years ago when he competed for Trackhouse Racing on the streets of Chicago.
"It says we're not stopping," Chastain said of the team's expansion to three cars. "It says that they went from an idea on a whiteboard that Trackhouse would be something, to one car, two, and now three, and with PROJECT91, four in the Daytona 500. I love it.
"I want to be driving for a team that the owner is spending money, and Justin is doing it. Trackhouse spares no expense and gives us the tools and the resources and the people we need, and adding that third car full-time allowed us to hire more people, and that's going to help the No. 1 and the No. 99. I truly believe it."
"And Shane being the driver, it's just awesome what I've learned from him in our two years working together. He drove the No. 91 car at first, and then in different stints, the No. 16 [for Kaulig Racing], and just seeing how he prepares was really a game changer for me for the prep side. Plus, the guy's an animal physically. So him and Daniel are really good benchmarks for me to chase after when it comes to things like running or in the gym.
Speaking more about PROJECT91 in the Daytona 500, Chastain detailed his experience with four-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves, who is set to drive the team's No. 91 Chevrolet in the 67th running of the "Great American Race".
"I have [spoken to him], yeah, when they were fitting him in the car the first time," he said. "I was at the shop that day, and they had kind of just gauged him of what they thought, and had some stuff mocked up inside the car seat-wise, and they had all my stuff because he's similar in height, similar in weight, similar sized guy, and he sat in my cockpit, everything that goes into the No. 1 car.
"And he's like, 'I love it; I need to adjust this, I need to adjust that, but this is really good', and so that's really nice for the shop, that they can just pull some things out of my allotment and plug it in. And a race car driver wants to sit where a race car driver wants to sit, and he just happens to line up with me from a physical side.
"So yeah, we got to talk that day, and it was cool. I never spent much time with him like I did that day, and like we have since, of just talking. Great guy, makes you smile, always laughing. I'm looking forward to him experiencing the Daytona 500 after everything else he's accomplished in his career."
The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season is scheduled to get underway on Sunday, February 16 with the 67th annual Daytona 500. Live coverage is set to be provided by Fox from Daytona International Speedway starting at 2:30 p.m. ET. Begin a free trial of FuboTV and catch all of the action!