Ross Chastain, a key driver for Trackhouse Racing, has voiced intense dissatisfaction after a string of poor qualifying results threatened to undermine the team‘s recent momentum. Despite notching four top-10 finishes in the past five races, including an impressive second-place at Texas Motor Speedway, Chastain’s achievements have come at a high price, with disappointing starting positions repeatedly forcing him to battle from deep in the field. This ongoing issue, which saw him start 31st at Texas and still almost clinch victory, paints a conflicted picture of resilience shadowed by systemic problems within the team’s race-day preparation.
The depth of Ross Chastain’s struggles with poor qualifying results became acutely visible through recent races. At Bristol Motor Speedway, Chastain started from a discouraging 35th position but managed to claw his way to a seventh-place finish, while at Darlington, he leapt up the order from 25th on the starting grid. The pattern endured at Martinsville and Las Vegas, where his qualifying positions were again outside of the top-15, forcing the talented driver into repeated uphill fights every Sunday. What is even more concerning for the No. 1 team is that these problematic qualifying efforts are piling up faster than at any other point in the 2024 season, raising alarm bells throughout the Trackhouse garage.
Reflecting on these struggles, Ross Chastain’s frustration has become increasingly apparent in his public statements. After narrowly missing out on victory in Texas, he bluntly admitted,
The candor and emotion in his words captured a deeper sense of urgency and disappointment, feelings that have reverberated across nearly every media appearance he has made this week, including on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
Chastain’s critique did not stop at his own performance. He pointed to the entire Trackhouse operation, referencing teammate Daniel Suarez and the broader organizational shortfalls.
Ross Chastain said on SiriusXM.
The root of Ross Chastain’s struggles with poor qualifying results appears tied to difficulties in quickly finding speed after unloading from the hauler, a challenge complicated by limited practice time in NASCAR’s current format. The intense pressure of needing to make rapid improvements often leaves little room for error, especially on tracks where passing becomes nearly impossible if the car isn’t fast out of the gate. Chastain underscored this complexity, noting,
This low morale among drivers is a stark contrast to the optimism Chastain once held, shaped by his years scraping through the NASCAR ranks with underfunded teams. While he admits he would have welcomed top-10s when driving for smaller organizations, the raised expectations at Trackhouse Racing and Chevrolet make the persistent Saturday failures much harder to accept.
he declared, drawing a firm line under the current situation.
The numbers reinforce the seriousness of the problem. Ross Chastain has an average finish of 13.5, ranking seventh among full-time drivers, but his average starting position is 23.5, with only nine full-time drivers qualifying worse on average this season. Notably, two of those are his own teammates, highlighting how the qualifying woes are impacting the entire Trackhouse Racing roster. Since joining Trackhouse, both Chastain and Suarez are enduring some of their worst average qualifying performances, underscoring the organization’s broader struggle to change its reputation as a middling Saturday team, despite having just three poles since 2021.
The implications of Ross Chastain’s struggles with poor qualifying results stretch far beyond personal frustration. Poor grid positions each week create needless obstacles, forcing extra physical and strategic effort on race days, and increasing the risk of early incidents. The team’s inability to capitalize on its resources and build momentum on qualifying day stands as a glaring weakness, one that, if left unchecked, might undermine even the strongest race-day performances. As the series heads to Kansas Speedway, a track where Chastain scored victory last fall, the stakes feel even higher, with fans and the team alike hoping a turnaround can start where success was once found. The coming weeks will test not only the resilience of Ross Chastain but also the capacity of Trackhouse Racing to confront and overcome its mounting qualifying crisis.
