Ross Chastain Grabs A Win In Nashville (6-25-23)
Headline Photo Courtesy: Ross Chastain Twitter Page
We come off a break to enter the last half of the season. Nashville Speedway qualifying brought multiple issues with a slick track. So tonight’s racing should be just as slick. Before the race start Carl Edwards was placed on the Walk of Fame for his amazing number of wins. Ross Chastain will bring us to the green flag just a little bit earlier than originally scheduled. Kyle Busch appears to have had a tire issue early with the right tire they did go ahead and change all tires but found he only had nine pounds of air. We do start seeing most drivers starting coming about halfway through stage one. Michael McDowell will get hit with a pit road commitment violation as he ran over the box. We get a run with Tyler Reddick with Noah Gragson within the same area. That sets up a great place for Tyler Reddick to pass Ross Chastain for the lead. Ross will not give up without a fight to the end. Tyler Reddick will keep the lead to win stage one.
We will start stage two with a three-way battle for the lead of the race. Plus three wide behind them. William Byron, Ross Chastain, and Martin Truex Jr are all battling. Everything was going well until Tyler Reddick lost a wheel right in the front of pit road after he was just on the pit road. This caution then lead to another caution as Brad Keselowski had an issue on the restart. It stacked cars up and caused multiple cars to have issues. The biggest issue was the extremely hard hit for Ryan Blaney. This will line teammates back up together to battle once again for the lead. Denny Hamlin will edge out his teammate on the restart. Martin Truex Jr will get close to catching Denny Hamlin but comes up just shy. Denny Hamlin wins stage two.
We head into stage three and Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr bring us back to green. Martin Truex Jr is keeping pretty close to Denny Hamlin but just has not caught him. Then all of a sudden Ross Chastain’s car comes to life. He passed Martin Truex Jr like he was almost sitting still. Quickly following by Denny Hamlin. It almost looked like they were going to make contact at first, but Ross while being aggressive made a clean pass. Kevin Harvick then had a tire go down and this started bringing everyone down the pit road. Martin Truex Jr did come down the pit road before Ross Chastain and Denny Hamlin tried to pass them on the pit road. However, Ross Chastain’s crew was just a little bit faster and got him out ahead of Martin. Then the battle is on to stay out front. Martin Truex Jr got close when lap traffic came into play. It looked like he may catch Ross. However, Ross was able to pull back away. Martin Truex Jr tries again closer to the end of the run but he is saying he has used up the equipment. He did try again with three laps to go. However, Ross Chastain was able to pull away and get the unofficial win.
