NASCAR CUP SERIES
CHARLOTTE MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES
MAY 24, 2025
Ross Chastain, driver of the No. 1 Jockey x Folds of Honor Camaro ZL1, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series’ practice and qualifying session at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Media Availability Quotes:
Historically, or at least the last few years, your competitors have kind of voiced their displeasure about your driving and stuff. But in recent weeks, it feels like you’ve gotten a lot of flowers from them complimenting you for kind of, you know, being able to take a car that maybe doesn’t have a lot of speed and finishing well. What is it like kind of being on the other end of that when you’re getting some praise and everything, or kind of just how you’re working and running well with a car that maybe shouldn’t be finishing where it is?
“Well, I can’t drive a slow car fast, so I’ve got fast cars when you see us go forward. As far as what other people say, no real thoughts there. We get out of these race cars, and you saw it with Joey (Logano) last week — he gets out and he sprays all this stuff, and then he watches it, and he’s like, oh, whoops. Most of the time, we don’t really take accountability for what we say, good or bad. So yeah, I see some of it, I do… but yeah, as far as the car goes, I can only go forward when it’s handling right. You see that in anything. The truck race last night, go backwards when the balance is off, and go forward when the balance is right. You see that same thing in the Cup car. We go forward when we get it right.”
You were teammates with Kurt Busch for a year. He’s now in the Hall of Fame. What did he mean to your career over that year and since then?
“Yeah, he was really motivating for me when I came into the No. 42 car. I had trained with him and been around him for a couple of years, but I wasn’t in competitive or equal cars. I was in different Cup cars, so definitely, when I finally got in it, he’s like – all right, you ready to go?
I just remember a lot of our conversations, and then as we got to racing, you know, that was a year after COVID and still some out-of-office stuff that would happen out of the shop, meetings and stuff. And he was just really busy, so we were definitely in two different places. I see what he was up against now with the workload and just the demands on our schedule. When you start winning races, it all goes up.
And then there was a lot of things I could ask him about and he’s like — well, I made that mistake, you know, 18 years ago or something. He’d had some story from way back in the day. It makes more sense now as I kind of step through my career and all these weekends, and then I see or I experience similar things that I see that happen to him. We had some good conversations that year and the years before that. He was nothing but good to me.”
Ross, you mentioned not being able to drive a slow car fast. Are these cars so heavily engineered now that a lot of what makes them go fast is sort of out of the driver’s hands?
“No, I don’t think it’s changed. I think that when Donnie, Cale, Bobby and Richard and all these — I’m saying their first names like I should say their last names, but those guys 50 years ago were racing and 70 years ago were racing, their cars had to be handling good to go fast.
It’s a physical automobile. It’s built. I mean, it’s no different than a human running a track race or a horse running a horse race. A car running a car race has to be better if it wants to go faster than the next one. It’s happened since the second car was built. The faster car went faster, and it still is the same thing here. So I don’t think it’s changed. I think that the drivers are more honest. The teams are more honest of how the car has to be right now. Back in the day, the driver was, I think, regarded as the hero if he won. I think you see that some these days, but not as much. It’s more people kind of point to the car because that’s where the truth is. I can, with one adjustment or one pound of air or one different right rear spring or something, I can go from a really confident driver on track to a not confident, and then I can go right back to being confident and fast if we make the right change.
I don’t think it’s changed. I think it’s the same. It’s always been since the second car was ever built.”
I saw you Thursday night at the Earnhardt premiere. After the show, what were your thoughts on what you saw in the first episode, and have you seen all four of them now?
“No, that’s the only one. I haven’t watched anything else. So, yeah, that was neat. And hearing some of the Earnhardt family in the room talk — Dale and Kelley were on camera, but some of them were off, and hearing them just standing around and listening to them talk and tell stories was cool. We were talking some old races. We were talking some current races. So that was what was cool for me, was just some of them that I know and that I’ve met over the years. Some are fans of me, some aren’t, so that was funny to watch them kind of banter, give each other a hard time about calling each other out of who wasn’t a fan of mine and who was.
So, yeah, a lot of that footage I hadn’t seen. I’ve looked at a bunch of old tape, but some of that was brand new to me. Yeah, it started the story, so I’m excited for the next three episodes.”
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