NASCAR CUP SERIES
BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES
APRIL 10, 2026
Ross Chastain, driver of the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet and No. 45 Niece Motorsports Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of running double duty in the NASCAR Cup and Craftsman Truck Series at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Media Availability Quotes:
Ross, you’re pulling double duty this weekend. You’re going to be racing in tonight’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, and of course, on Sunday.
“I feel good. Great drive up. Coming over here from Mooresville, you cruise up through the mountains. If anybody else here in the room might have done it, it’s just a beautiful ride. So I’m already in a good mood getting over here. And then, yeah, get in the truck and rip some laps. It’s a high throttle commitment in the truck. With the Ilmor engines and the big body on these things, there’s a lot of throttle commitment right off the truck and onto the track. Definitely a high throttle commitment. It’s good to be back in Bristol.”
The topic this week has been Talladega and some of the changes that NASCAR is going to implement to kind of eliminate fuel mileage? What are your thoughts on that?
“I don’t have any. I saw the rumblings of it and, you know, it’s happening. And to be honest, I didn’t do any research on it. I came back from the farm Monday night and hit the ground running Tuesday morning for Bristol only. I had two races to prepare for, so that’s the only thing I focused on. I saw it and thought I’ll learn about that down the road when I need to. So to be honest, I haven’t looked at any of the math.”
The Truck Series race tonight had seven full-time Cup Series guys, which is the most they’re saying in the series history. Where do you stand on Cup guys being allowed to race in other series, the limitations that have been in place, and now those limitations kind of being loosened a little bit?
“Yeah, I’m all for it, selfishly. I love racing, and I fit into that mold of, to race here, I go by NASCAR’s rules. So whatever the rules are, I’ll abide by. I lived out the limit of five for a couple years, and did more than five before I went full-time for my third year. So I’m going to go to the max, pretty much. Whatever their maximum is, I’m pretty much going to chase the maximum, so we’re on the road to 56 this year. I was the only one that did it last year, so I don’t see anybody really even running five. It might be by accident if they do, just filling in for people or something.
I’m all for it. I’ve been the kid sharing the truck with Cup drivers, and now I’m the Cup driver sharing it with Landen (Lewis). I love that Landen’s getting to learn from Phil Gould and work around the same guys and girls on the No. 45 truck that I am. I definitely feel like they’ve got him in a good starting spot, and now there’s the next regime to get to try to mold him off what I do for the next two months, basically, in the truck and he gets the rest of the time.”
Before the break at Martinsville, you said that you guys were on the search to find the speed that you felt Trackhouse was lacking. When you have an off week like you did last week, to have that chance to take a look at the first seven weeks collectively, how does that help the program and re-evaluate where everything is before you jump into this long stretch that will lead you into the summer?
“Yeah, I can’t speak for the shop because I took Monday post-Martinsville to debrief and go through everything Martinsville, and then I caught the Monday night flight out and I went where there’s no cell service and had a great time with my family I was at several different types of farms down there learning about the ag side of my life, trying to broaden that and tell some stories. I know my crew chief went to Florida, as well. He’s from down there, so him and his family went down to their neck of the woods up near Lakeland. I know that there were people working. I know Justin’s (Marks) has his foot on the gas to find it. I took a break. I don’t think many others did.”
Does that help you mentally reset and come back fresher for this next stretch?
“I guess so. I mean, I work in such a week cycle of my life. I start my week on Monday. My Apple calendar is Monday to Sunday, which throws everybody off that ever looks at it. I’ve worked really hard to be this busy, so I intentionally took Monday to Monday. I don’t know if it helps, but it’s what I wanted to do, and I get to make my own decisions, so that’s what I did.”
Looking at the Truck race tonight, I heard the PJ1 was really sticky, really strong, stronger than years past. How do you anticipate the groove to possibly move up, and how long do you think that would take?
“In my opinion, it’s no stronger than it was in the past for a truck night. It’s always, in my experience, been grip city because the track has the least amount of rubber. We’ve got some wheel force testing and a few things back at the end of last year that cars ran on the track, but not much. We ran more here than the tracks had since we were here for the race last fall. I haven’t been in a ton of truck races here lately, but what I remember from years past, it was like this, and I normally don’t see many trucks going up. I know we all want it to. We wish it would, but that would require not spraying it coming in here an hour before practice or whenever they sprayed it. It would take either diluting that or not spraying if you want the trucks to move up. I believe the trucks, unless I’m remembering it wrong, have been a bottom race.”
Looking ahead to Kansas, what are some of the things that stand out about that track? “Running the top, so the opposite of here. For everything, you just go right around the top, fight for the top, qualify around the top. It’s a big ag land. Flying in, it honestly feels like home for me. Inland Florida has a lot of farm fields, and Kansas definitely has a lot of farm fields. There’s nothing growing out there yet, but it just feels like home coming in and seeing a lot of big fields ready to grow some crops this year.
Then getting to the track, I’ve got great memories there, personally, with Truck and Cup wins. It’s the only track that I’ve got two different series wins at. Actually, last night, Al Niece stayed with me before we came up here today. We just had the second trophy made from our first truck win back in 2019 there. We’ve had one trophy they gave to us that night in 2019, but we never had another one made. They are absurdly expensive, specifically for that trophy for Kansas. We finally grew our big boy pants – Al did, I didn’t, and he walked in with it last night. That was really cool, so a lot of good memories out there.”
Looking ahead to Sunday, it’s going to be the first time the Cup Series is running Bristol in a competition setting under the new rules package. What will higher horsepower, lower downforce play into running at this short track?
“I have no idea. I think that’s so cool that we’re all going to learn together through practice and qualifying tomorrow. You won’t see tire wear, but we’re going to be with less downforce in the cars and more power. It should be more off-throttle time and faster acceleration down the straightaways, but I have to slow down more. I think that’s what’s great about our sport is when we make a change, we don’t get to come test it. Yes, the wheel force cars did, but not the teams. It’s a different game when we all get here to race, so I have no idea.”
I know the All-Star race isn’t for a month, but NASCAR experimented with North Wilkesboro and now they’re running it at Dover. Is that a great place for the All-Star Race to maybe experiment with a new track, or where would you like to see the race go in the next few years or so?
“I don’t think I’m equipped to answer that. I think that NASCAR, the France family, and their track ownership team that runs the tracks, and then SMI being the other big player in this — got a couple of private tracks out there, and if a private track owner wanted to vie from one, I would be for it. I mean, if we want to go put some lipstick on a track, I think that New Smyrna would be a great one, selfish in Florida. I think a May race in Florida would be awesome. I don’t know that we’ve ever had that. That’s a great time of year down there. So, yeah, I would say if I had to throw a track in the hat, toss a name in the hat, I’d say New Smyrna.”
For the fans who’ll be watching the Truck Race tonight who maybe aren’t here or don’t get a chance to talk to you, or obviously don’t get a chance to race the truck, can you describe to them how the truck is different on the track here, how racing is different, how it feels different than, say, a Cup car would feel on this particular track?
“I don’t know that I can describe it, and I’m the one that drives it. The truck has a spec engine, so we run at lower RPM. We run a little over 1,000 RPMs less, so you just have less RPM noise, like less engine noise, and the exhaust systems the trucks run sound to me dull in the truck, a product of less rotations per minute. The trucks are longer, which usually gets me in trouble. You see me a lot of times clearing up in front of people or down and stuff, and with the back of the truck sticking out further, that’s more of a personal thing, I guess, than what it feels like. But, yeah, I’d say they’re just duller. And then there’s more room up and down in the cockpit, like in the truck, but less room front to back. I don’t know how some of these tall guys fit in the trucks. I know (Carson) Hocevar’s knees — when he was at Niece, his knees rubbed the dash, and I always told him that I think they should have to build a different dash for him because his legs are up there knocking around the metal dash. But he never cared, and he goes fast in anything he gets it.”
This track is a handful, but is the truck more of a handful or not so much compared to, say, your Cup car?
“My heart rate was high today, and it’s going to be high tomorrow. I mean, it’s Bristol. When the truck’s comfortable, I was fine. I had one big slip off at (turn) two today, and I thought I was crashing. So it’ll bite you quick.”
You mentioned the Niece Motorsports youngsters. First of all, how much have you interacted with them, and then what advice, if any, have you given to them?
“Yeah, Andres (Perez de Lara), one that’s got his partial year at Spire and then came over to Niece. He had an uptick in performance when he got over to Niece, which the folks at Spire were happy. They wanted to see him do good, so that was good to see that. He’s their only full-time guy. Everybody’s working really hard to put together what he needs in the trucks and build trucks around him, being that he’s in it every week.
So yeah, talked to him every now and then. Talking to Tyler today, you know, it’s tough because I remember when I was the kid sharing the trucks, and I had all the time in the world to sit at the shop, watch them be built, learn about them, watch them build every part for the truck, build the chassis and hang the bodies. And then I wanted time with Brad and Joey back then when I was at BKR, and now that I’m where I’m at, I realize now why they weren’t there. Just everything about Cup and all facets of it draws so many minutes of the day that I don’t get a ton of time up there as much as I’d like. They rely on the Chevy program, the Josh Wise program inside of Chevy, to do a lot of that. It’s the same program I go through. We’re prepping the same, they just get it from a different group.
So I’d say they’re very fortunate to have programs like that, the program that Chevy provides, because I didn’t have that a decade or more ago, and I’d have been a better driver if I had it.”
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