NASCAR driver Ross Chastain hasn’t made a ton of friends on the track this season, and he’s often been the subject of For The Win’s NASCAR Feud of the Week. His aggressive driving has led to complaints from his competitors, some of whom have had their race cars destroyed as a result of his actions.
Although that didn’t exactly happen with Kyle Busch on Sunday at Richmond Raceway, the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota driver was part of Chastain’s latest collateral damage this weekend and hilariously turned his name (and on-track actions) into a verb after the race.
In the final stage of the 400-lap race at the Virginia short track, Busch and Chastain in the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet were racing side-by-side amid a pack of cars running through Turns 3 and 4. With Busch on the outside, Chastain made contact with the No. 18’s left-rear quarter panel, turning Busch sideways into oncoming traffic.
Ross Chastain into Kyle Busch = CRASH.
Erik Jones and Martin Truex Jr. are also involved. #NASCAR
📺 : @USA_Network pic.twitter.com/iIc36j7Lix
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) August 14, 2022
Chastain, in the process, also got turned, seemingly from contact with Erik Jones in the No. 43 Petty GMS Motorsports Chevrolet, and Martin Truex Jr. in the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota was involved as well.
While Jones was unable to continue the race, the others were with Truex finishing seventh, Busch ninth and Chastain 18th. Kevin Harvick won his second consecutive race after snapping a 65-race winless streak two weekends ago, and that has important playoff ramifications.
And as a result of the wreck and subsequent caution, Busch, after the race, described what happened: “We got Chastain’d this week.”
"We got Chastain'd" this week."
Add Kyle Busch to the list of drivers not happy with Ross Chastain. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/Oz9sJHUlzI
— NASCAR on NBC (@NASCARonNBC) August 14, 2022
Busch told NBC Sports on pit road:
“We were looking OK and in a good spot just coming up through there, working our way methodically through the field with our M&M’s Toyota Camry, and we got Chastain’d this week. We were his victim this week, and then that didn’t hurt us too bad.
“We restarted back in a decent spot. But then the next spin, I think, was Christopher [Bell]. That allowed the guys that were around us that we were kind of racing, some of our team guys, to come get tires, and then they had 10 fresher laps on tires, and that’s the whole rest of the day. So that kind of hurt us. If we would have been on that strategy, we would have run out of tires, but we also probably would have been in the top five. So just wrong side of the strategy there.
“At the end, nothing to do really to flip that but good fight all day long. The top 10’s about what we had anyway. I figured the best we were it was about a seventh, but barring a strategy call, we could have probably been top five. So that’s all we had anyway.
Busch ended up having a pretty decent day, and he didn’t blast Chastain after the race — jokes aside. So we’re not calling this one a NASCAR feud just yet.
