Ross Chastain was the center of attention almost every week during the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season. Coming out of relative obscurity, he was either winning, wrecking, or fighting with another driver, sometimes all at once. To top it all off, he advanced to the Championship 4 by making the most outrageous on-track move the sport has ever seen. However, Chastain’s No. 1 Chevrolet has subtly dropped back toward the center of the pack in the years that have followed. It’s not that he’s lost his driving skills, though. This season has demonstrated that the “Melon Man” is still among the sport’s most gifted drivers, despite the results not reflecting it.
The main topic of conversation during Sunday’s Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway was how difficult it was to pass. But don’t tell Chastain, who finished eighth after carefully and painstakingly cutting through the field after qualifying 35th. He moved up 32 spots under green overall, 14 spots more than the next-highest driver. For the seventh time in nine 2025 races, Chastain recorded a double-digit positive pass differential at Bristol. He trails just Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Christopher Bell in the series’ overall ranking of fifth in the statistic. Because it essentially equalizes any equipment advantages or disadvantages by comparing each driver to the other drivers they are racing against, pass differential is a great measure of raw competence.
Thus, the true cause of Chastain’s “decline” may be explained: his Trackhouse Racing team has fallen behind. Something appeared to change in the middle of the following year, just after Chastain’s collision with Kyle Larson of Hendrick Motorsports at Darlington Raceway, after the team had risen to prominence in just their second season as one of NASCAR’s top organizations in 2022. Following the event, it has been rumored that Rick Hendrick, the owner of the flagship Chevrolet team, encouraged the manufacturer to reduce funding for Trackhouse Racing’s operations. The performances of Daniel Suarez and Shane van Gisbergen, Chastain’s teammates, have particularly demonstrated this. In 2022, Suarez also had a successful career year, achieving personal records for points, laps led, and top 10 finishes, while earning his first win at Sonoma Raceway, but he has not replicated those numbers since.
The Kiwi road racing sensation, Van Gisbergen, has had a difficult start to full-time Cup Series competition and now ranks 34th in points out of 36 full-time drivers in 2025. Suarez, who is ranked 27th, isn’t any better. Then there’s Chastain, who is firmly in the 11th position playoff picture. Even though he hasn’t led many laps or meaningfully challenged for many victories, he is making the most of his abilities with a team that isn’t making the most of them. He is now one of the most underappreciated drivers in the Cup Series garage, despite the fact that he still has a divisive reputation among many fans.
