{"id":44082,"date":"2023-10-24T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2023-10-24T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=44082"},"modified":"2023-10-29T17:58:49","modified_gmt":"2023-10-29T22:58:49","slug":"a-year-later-ross-chastain-grasps-the-impact-of-the-hail-melon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2023\/10\/24\/a-year-later-ross-chastain-grasps-the-impact-of-the-hail-melon\/","title":{"rendered":"A year later, Ross Chastain grasps the impact of the \u201cHail Melon\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer<\/em><\/p>\n

NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

The importance of what he had just done wasn\u2019t immediately apparent to Ross Chastain.<\/p>\n

It was Sunday, October 30, 2022, and Chastain had just stolen the final NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 Playoff berth in the Round of 8 elimination race at Martinsville Speedway.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Ross Chastain. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Entering the final two corners at the venerable short track, Chastain grabbed fifth gear, pinned his No. 1 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet against the outside wall and shot around the perimeter like a roulette ball launched around the rim of the wheel.<\/p>\n

That impossibly risky, unprecedented move netted Chastain a fourth-place finish\u2014enough to knock an unsuspecting Denny Hamlin out of the Playoffs.<\/p>\n

But the contribution to NASCAR lore didn\u2019t register right away. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were driving home that night, we stopped in Walkertown, somewhere just south of Martinsville on the way back to Charlotte, and we ate at a Waffle House,\u201d Chastain said before last Sunday\u2019s race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. \u201cWe were laughing and talking about it, but looking back, it really didn\u2019t (register). <\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t till I went back up there to remove the wall. Mr. Campbell (Martinsville Speedway president Clay Campbell) had me up. We took a piece of Kubota equipment and lifted the center of the wall out with most of the word \u2018Martinsville\u2019 in it. He gave that to us, and that\u2019s going to go with the Hail Melon car that (team owner) Justin (Marks) kept.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his brief Cup career, Chastain already has added two verbs to the NASCAR lexicon. The first was the pejorative \u201cChastained,\u201d meaning victimized by overly aggressive driving by the watermelon farmer turned stock car star.<\/p>\n

The second is \u201cHail-Melon-ed,\u201d which Hamlin\u2019s crew chief, Chris Gabehart, used to describe the move that knocked Hamlin out of the Playoffs, as in his driver \u201cgot Hail-Melon-ed.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Hamlin never saw it coming.<\/p>\n

\u201cChris told me how many spots we had to get (to advance to the next round) with very few laps,\u201d recalled Hamlin, who finished fifth. \u201cI was trying to get as many as I could, and Chris was constantly telling me where we were. <\/p>\n

\u201cI just remember him saying we were two points ahead going down the back straightaway on the last lap, battling Brad (Keselowski) for one more position. At that point, I didn\u2019t think there was a need to push the envelope anymore. But, yeah, ended up out of it, and all I remember is him (Chastain) being there beside me at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

Second-place finisher Kyle Larson had a better idea than Hamlin that something unique was happening behind him. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou look in the mirror to see kind of how close the guy is behind you, and I remember just seeing something kind of going on\u2026 like coming off turn 4, there was a new car in my mirror, so that\u2019s all I really remember from that. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then you see the replay and all that. Yeah, that was crazy, for sure, and I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll see the highlight of it a million more times as we lead into Martinsville. But, yeah, that was definitely wild.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since its installation as the penultimate race on the NASCAR Cup schedule in 2020, Martinsville has provided high drama, as it is likely to do once again in Sunday\u2019s Xfinity 500 (2 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

Facing a must-win situation in 2020, Chase Elliott did just that and went on to claim the series title the following Sunday at Phoenix Raceway.<\/p>\n

By the time Chastain had finished his unlikely trip around the outside wall last year, Christopher Bell had crossed the finish line for an 11th-hour victory that propelled him into the Championship 4.<\/p>\n

Time may blur the memory of those accomplishments, but the Hail Melon will remain at the forefront of the sport\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Though the physical evidence of the feat may be obliterated by the removal of the wall section and a fresh coat of paint, Chastain\u2019s name will be linked inextricably with that imaginative path to the Championship 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I removed the wall, that\u2019s where it really set in,\u201d Chastain said, harkening back to March 7, when he was gifted with the wall section. \u201cThat was the moment it sunk in. It just kind of hit me that this always will be something that I\u2019m remembered for. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt made it even sweeter to go to Nashville this year and win after that\u2014because it was like a third win in 2022\u2014but I don\u2019t want that to be my lasting legacy. I want to win more races and fight for everything we can fight for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer NASCAR Wire Service The importance of what he had just done wasn\u2019t immediately apparent to Ross Chastain. It was Sunday, October 30, 2022, and Chastain had just stolen the final NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 Playoff berth in the Round of 8 elimination race at Martinsville Speedway. Entering the final two corners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":40535,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[407,16,655],"class_list":["post-44082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-martinsville-speedway","tag-nascar","tag-ross-chastain"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/GettyImages-1432009224-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-bt0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44083,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44082\/revisions\/44083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}