Cup driver’s signature Watermelon show dates back to an Xfinity Series win in 2018.
- NASCAR Cup driver Ross Chastain celebrated his first series victory last Sunday at Circuit of the Americas in a way that only a watermelon farmer would truly appreciate.
- This watermelon drama started in September 2018 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when Chastain scored his first Xfinity Series win.
- Chastain’s team makes sure that a watermelon on board the team transporter every week, encased in foam padding for protection against falls … just in cast it’s needed.
The watermelon. Everybody wants to know about the watermelon.
It’s a unique victory lane device, after all. How many times have you seen Denny Hamlin smash a FedEx truck or Kyle Busch stomp on a pack of M&Ms after a win?
No, Ross Chastain has the lead in this category, and no one else is even within 10 seconds of first place.
Last Sunday, Chastain finally got the chance to smash the most significant watermelon of them all as he scored his first NASCAR Cup Series victory in a wild finish at Circuit of the Americas.
The watermelon, which had been waiting and waiting, was removed from its protective foam padding in the Trackside Racing Chevrolet team hauler, rushed to victory lane by Roy Miller, the team’s transporter driver, and sacrificed in a moment of ecstasy, one Chastain had been targeting for years.
Gosh. Amazing job by this @TeamTrackhouse team. Thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way. We’re really out here living the dream!#WatermelonEveryday #FeelWhole pic.twitter.com/4mo65DytfS
— Ross Chastain (@RossChastain) March 29, 2022
This watermelon drama started in September 2018 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when Chastain scored his first Xfinity Series win. A watermelon farmer from South Florida, Chastain had been carrying watermelons to races for years. There was one in victory lane at Las Vegas. Prompted by a television reporter who wanted to get video of the winning driver smashing the watermelon, Chastain gave it his best shot. A tradition was born.
It wasn’t like the watermelon had a long wait to meet its ultimate destiny. Chastain, who jumped into NASCAR with five races in the Camping World Truck Series in 2011, doesn’t want anyone to misunderstand.
“I won’t lie,” he said. “I didn’t have watermelons everywhere. At my first race, we had a ton of watermelons and a watermelon chef and all that. But not every week.”
That would be a bit presumptuous. Along the way, in Truck and Xfinity and Cup, Chastain, while trying to build his resume, raced for teams with little hope of winning. The watermelons were mostly for refreshment.
Now, one is on board the team transporter every week, encased in foam padding for protection against falls but on the counter so every team member has to pass by it every day and ponder its fate.
WATERMELON. SMASHED.@RossChastain | 🍉 pic.twitter.com/sJG0eGGFFW
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) March 27, 2022
In a season filled with surprises, Chastain has fit well into the template. Trackhouse Racing, a second-year team which fields Chevrolets for Chastain and Daniel Suarez, has roared out of the gates showing strength, and Chastain slammed and bammed his way past —and through—several contenders to win Sunday in Austin.
The fact that Trackhouse’s home base is the old Chip Ganassi Racing shop in Concord, North Carolina, is more than a bit ironic. After notching his first Xfinity win in a part-time role with Ganassi in 2018, Chastain, after seven years of up-and-down runs, finally reached a solid opportunity when Ganassi named him to run full-time in Xfinity in 2019. But that hope dissolved in controversy when DC Solar, the team’s sponsor, dropped out because of legal issues. Ganassi abandoned the Xfinity team, although he kept Chastain on contract and gave him freedom to drive for other teams, which he did—in all three NASCAR series.
But the phone call that suddenly slammed the door on the planned full-time run in Xfinity was a brutal slap in the face.
“My agents called me one evening and said, ‘Hey, take a seat. We have some stuff we need to talk to you about,’ ” he said. “They didn’t have a lot of answers, but it was clear it was really bad, that the thing was over and we wouldn’t be racing. It was probably a three-hour phone call with the three of us asking the same questions with no answers.”
Ross Chastain will be back in action this week as the NASCAR Cup Series visits Richmond.
Icon SportswireGetty Images
Staggered by the sudden, stark news, Chastain retreated to Florida and those watermelons.
“I didn’t want to see anybody,” he said. “I got out of Charlotte. I left my phone in my truck and got on a tractor. I did that all day long, pulling a plow back and forth one pass at a time. Did that for a couple of days, listening to FM radio. I had no answers and a lot of questions. It was a dark time.”
Life as a farmer suddenly looked really good to Chastain, but he eventually returned to the Charlotte area and put together rides in Cup, Xfinity and Truck. He bounced from team headquarters in Concord, Mooresville, Statesville and Welcome and to simulator practice in Huntersville, filling practically every day with some sort of racing. He often was on the Chevrolet simulator in Huntersville at 7:30 a.m. Monday mornings after traveling home overnight after a Cup race.
Then Trackhouse and team owner Justin Marks came along, and the foundation for a competitive team was built from the remainders of Ganassi’s operation, which closed when the veteran owner decided to concentrate on other racing series.
The payoff—and the smashed watermelon—arrived Sunday in Texas. Chastain had crossed into new country.
“I still don’t feel anything is really different,” he said Thursday while swimming in the differences. He was in the middle of a day that included numerous media interviews and a visit from Fox Sports and its television lights and cameras. This is what happens when you destroy a watermelon in the context of victory lane.
“The media this week has been more and the sleep has been less,” he said. “But when we get to Richmond this weekend I’ll do things the same way I would have if I had been second or 40th at COTA.”
He accepted a call from past Cup champion Dale Jarrett, who congratulated him on “joining an elite group, something that sets you apart.”
“I don’t take that lightly,” Chastain said.
The watermelons, too, are heavy. But quite manageable, thank you.
Keyword: First-time NASCAR Cup Winner Ross Chastain Doesn't Take His Watermelon Act Lightly