Ross Chastain used an incredible wall-riding move on the final lap at Martinsville to advance to the NASCAR Cup Series championship race.
Chastain went from 10th to fifth on the final lap of the race by intentionally driving his car into the wall at full speed. He accelerated against the wall through the entirety of Turns 3 and 4 and passed five cars so that he would have a chance to win the 2022 Cup Series championship in the winner-take-all title race at Phoenix on Nov. 6.
Christopher Bell won the race and advanced to the final four with Chastain, Joey Logano and Chase Elliott. Chastain’s move on the final lap eliminated perennial title contender Denny Hamlin. Hamlin was in the final four ahead of Chastain via points until the final two corners.
Millennials will know that what Chastain did was the preferred way to win a race at Martinsville on EA Sports’ NASCAR video games in the early 2000s when you had the car damage turned off. And Chastain referenced those video games after he climbed from his car.
“Played a lot of NASCAR 05 on the Gamecube with [brother] Chad growing up and you can get away with it,” Chastain said. “And I never knew if it would actually work. I did that when I was 8 years old.”
Here’s what it looked like from inside Chastain’s car.
Hamlin might have had the best car throughout Sunday’s race. He led 203 of the race’s 500 laps but lost positions on pit road during each of the final three caution flags of the race. Had Hamlin’s pit crew held serve, there’s a good chance he wouldn’t have been in position to fall victim to Chastain’s video game move.
“You gotta execute all day and we just didn’t control the race when we had control of it,” Hamlin said. “Each caution we just kept losing some spots.”
Chastain’s lap time on the final lap was nearly 2 seconds faster than Bell’s. Bell ran a lap of 20.512 seconds while Chastain ran an 18.845 while riding the wall in the final two corners.
How Bell won the race
Bell entered Sunday’s race needing to win to advance to the title race after he was taken out in the first race of the three-race third round by Bubba Wallace’s intentional crash of Kyle Larson. His team made the choice to pit for four fresh tires on the final caution of the race and Bell restarted behind drivers who either didn’t pit or took new tires.
Bell quickly worked his way to the front over the final 25 laps of the race and easily passed Chase Briscoe with five laps to go. Briscoe had stayed out during that caution on older tires because he was in the same situation as Bell. Staying out was Briscoe’s best shot of winning the race because he wasn’t near the front of the field when the caution came out.
Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Hamlin and Bell combined to lead 353 laps on Sunday and Bell will be the team’s only representative in the title race. With Chastain’s advancement to the final round, all four drivers racing for the title at Phoenix are from four different teams. It’s the first time since 2018 that four different teams will be racing for the title after the first five years of NASCAR’s winner-take-all final race playoff format featured four drivers from four different teams.
Race results
1. Christopher Bell
2. Kyle Larson
3. Ryan Blaney
4. Brad Keselowski [Disqualified after the race, placed in last]
5. Ross Chastain
6. Denny Hamlin
7. Joey Logano
8. William Byron
9. Bubba Wallace
10. Chase Briscoe
11. Chase Elliott
12. Harrison Burton
13. Daniel Suarez
14. Todd Gilliland
15. Cole Custer
16. Aric Almirola
17. Kevin Harvick
18. Michael McDowell
19. Erik Jones
20. Ty Gibbs
21. Martin Truex Jr.
22. Corey LaJoie
23. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
24. AJ Allmendinger
25. Chris Buescher
26. Noah Gragson
27. Austin Cindric
28. Justin Haley
29. Cody Ware
30. Kyle Busch
31. JJ Yeley
32. Ty Dillon
33. Landon Cassill
34. Austin Dillon
35. BJ McLeod
36. Tyler Reddick