Ross Chastain advances to NASCAR championship after wall-riding move

Ross Chastain performed a wall-riding maneuver on the last lap at Martinsville on Sunday that earned him a seat in the NASCAR Cup Series.

The driver claimed the fifth spot from the tenth by sliding the side of his car against the wall throughout Turns 3 and 4 to pass five cars. He thanked 2000s NASCAR video games for inspiring him to do the stunt.

“Played a lot of NASCAR 05 on the Gamecube with [brother] Chad growing up, and you can get away with it,” Chastain told reporters. “And I never knew if it would actually work. I did that when I was eight years old.”

Denny Hamlin was eliminated from the final four following Chastain’s sticky move. He lost spots on pit road in all last three caution flags. Of 500 laps at Martinsville, the racer was leading for 203.

“You gotta execute all day, and we just didn’t control the race when we had control of it,” the Joe Gibbs Racing member said. “Each caution we just kept losing some spots.”

Christopher Bell took the first spot in Sunday’s race. He needed the win to advance as he had been taken out in the first race after being impacted by Bubba Wallace and Kyle Larson’s crash.

Bell, a teammate of Chastain, decided to pit for four fresh tires only on the last caution. This caused the racer to restart behind drivers who did not change tires or pit.

In the final 25 laps, Bell claimed the first spot and passed Chase Briscoe with five laps left. Chastain was nearly two seconds faster than Bell in the final lap. Bell’s last lap was 20.512 seconds, while Chastain spent 18.845 seconds.

The 2022 Cup Series championship will be held in Phoenix in November 2022. Other racers that advanced to the cup are Joey Logano and Chase Elliott. This championship will be the first time since 2018 that contenders for the cup come from different teams.