NASCAR CUP SERIES: AUTOTRADER ECHOPARK AUTOMOTIVE 400

September 24, 2023

Ross Chastain

Pit Lane Interview

Q. A runner-up finish after what seemed like kind of a major issue. That throttle position sensor went bad, went dead. First of all, tell us what that was like in the car.

ROSS CHASTAIN: It was terrible. You push the gas and it ain't got no gas. I noticed something on a few cautions like having the car off in third gear, clutching, dropped the clutch with the ignition on, and it kind of stumbled, but I thought I just had it too low of RPM.

Then I pit, and that pit stop is when it had already failed, and it wouldn't go. I'm part throttle to get it fired, and it doesn't think I'm doing anything.

From there they walked me through it, and basically I just had to give it a lot of throttle, so the next pit stop for our final two-tire stop was just a whole lot of throttle. I'm sure the eardrums were blown out of everybody behind our pit box, but for our Worldwide Express Chevy, we were not fast enough to run second with two tires. We were with four.

Early in the race I thought we were one of the best cars, and I wish we could have raced with those guys. We just worked our way back with taking four tires a lot, and some bad restarts on my side, but we had the speed, and we showed it all weekend.

We did everything we needed to do, and at this race, if you follow the chart for running position is everything that the 1 team is about, and I love it.

Q. You feel confident headed to the next two races?

ROSS CHASTAIN: I don't know about those. I only care about here, and I just want to run good at the track I'm at. We go to Talladega and the Roval, we'll just go try to perform like we did today. If it's not looking good, just what does the next lap take, what does the next breath take, and whenever we do the right things, those races, they give out the same amount of points as this one, and we'll go and race them the same way.