LEBANON, Tenn. — Ross Chastain is ready to get back behind the wheel of a race car after a busy week celebrating going from last place to victory lane at Charlotte Motor Speedway to win the Coca-Cola 600 for the first time.
He also knows only too well how humbling competing in NASCAR’s top-tier Cup Series can be, even for someone coming off a victory in a crown jewel race.
“We put ourselves at a lot of high risk getting back on track that the success could be hard again,” Chastain said Saturday, still wearing the Coca-Cola 600 winner’s ring on his right hand. “The cars don’t know what happened last week.”
Still, Chastain has three top-three finishes over his past four races, and he goes into Sunday night’s Cracker Barrel 400 very familiar with Nashville Superspeedway, located about 30 miles southeast of downtown Music City.
Nashville is home to his team, Trackhouse Racing — which will mark its 300th Cup Series race Sunday — and Chastain won on this 1.33-mile tri-oval in 2023. He also has finished second and fifth, and he had a chance to win last year.
The race took a record five overtimes to finish then, with Team Penske’s Joey Logano surviving for his first Cup Series win of 2024 on the way to his third season championship on the top circuit. He had saved just enough gas to pull out that victory, so of course it merited a look back just in case.
“You don’t know that opportunity will ever present itself again,” Logano said. “It’s a pretty rare opportunity for it to end up like that. But because we were ready for it and we were prepared that day, that’s what helped us win. So yeah, you’re always kind of looking at that stuff.”
This race now is a month earlier than the past four years, and with the regular season halfway over, Chastain is already among the eight drivers already locked into the 16-car playoffs with a victory.
Chastain said he doesn’t know why he’s been so successful at Nashville Superspeedway, though he credited Trackhouse and his crew chief, Phil Surgen. The 32-year-old driver said he doesn’t feel like he does anything different as far as his own preparation.
“We have really, really good race cars,” Chastain said of the No. 1 Chevrolet.
Chase Briscoe will start on the pole for a second straight year. He also leads NASCAR this season with three poles in his first year with Joe Gibbs Racing, the latest setting Nashville Superspeedway’s Cup Series record with his lap of 164.395 mph topping the 161.992 mph Aric Almirola posted in a Ford in 2021.
Briscoe, who started on the pole at the Coca-Cola 600 last week, still is looking for his first win of the season after five top-five finishes in his No. 19 Toyota.
JGR teammate Denny Hamlin will start second after posting a lap of 164.119 mph in his No. 11 Toyota. Points leader William Byron of Hendrick Motorsports (163.374 mph) will start third in a Chevy, with 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick fourth in a Toyota. Chastain will start fifth, and RFK Racing’s Brad Keselowski in sixth has the best starting position for a Ford driver.
Keselowski, currently 32nd in the Cup Series standings, earned his first win on the second-tier Xfinity Series at Nashville in 2008. He walked the D-shaped track Saturday and marveled at how the venue, which opened in 2001, has changed since his career-changing victory.
“It’s kind of aged like fine wine,” Keselowski said. “When I was doing the walk, I was thinking about it. The surface is 25, 26 years old, and it’s in great condition. The facilities are in great condition. It’s just really a kind of walk back in time for me.”
This time, Nashville sets up the new “NASCAR In-Season Challenge” involving 32 drivers and a single-elimination format over five races. The top 32 in points after Sunday night’s race will make up the field for the three seeding races, at Michigan International Speedway (June 8), Mexico City’s Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez (June 15) and Pennsylvania’s Pocono Raceway (June 22).
Drivers will be seeded by their best finish over those three races for the competition, which starts with the June 28 race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Similar to the playoffs, the field will be narrowed to 16 on the streets of Chicago (July 6), eight at California’s Sonoma Raceway (July 13), four at Dover Motor Speedway (July 20) and finally two at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (July 27).
The tournament comes with a $1 million prize to the winner and is part of a new media rights deal including TNT.
Hamlin at +350 is the betting favorite to win Sunday night, according to BetMGM Sportsbook, followed by Hendrick’s Kyle Larson (+550), JGR’s Christopher Bell (+650) and Hendrick’s Byron (+725).
Whether Hamlin makes the starting line Sunday night remains to be seen. His fiancee is expecting their third child, a boy, with Sunday the due date. Hamlin, who has two daughters, said he has an eight-hour window to race and get home but hadn’t set a timeline to make a final decision before qualifying.
“I can’t miss it,” Hamlin said of his son’s arrival.