Even two race weekends into the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season, seeing Ross Chastain in the Busch Light colours most often associated with Kevin Harvick over the previous eight seasons has been disconcerting. But there he has been, both at the Clash in Los Angeles and in preparation for the Daytona 500, wearing a light-blue and white fire suit with the emblem of his Trackhouse Racing team’s new sponsor.
Chastain finds it more stunning to see life-sized cardboard cutouts of himself in his new outfits beside supermarket and convenience shop displays promoting his sponsor’s product.
“It’s wild,” Chastain explains. “To be honest, my mind races when people send me images and I see them online, get tagged, and so on, and we go through them. It’s just incredible to think that from my uncle in South Florida to a farmer in Delaware, and now up west, they’re seeing the product in stores. It’s just indescribable. It’s so difficult to put into words.
Chastain will wear his new colours in his sixth Daytona 500 appearance (Monday, 4 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), where he hopes to win his first “Great American Race.” The 31-year-old driver has three top ten finishes in the season-opener, including ninth place last year.
Chastain has recently received a lot of attention, from his involvement in the Netflix docu-series “NASCAR: Full Speed” to his newfound appearance in commercial beer displays. It turns out that his image has been recreated in cardboard before. Chastain stated that 12 years ago, he purchased ten of them to offer to existing and new sponsors as he sought to break into NASCAR’s national series. In some, he had a helmet under his right arm. In place of the helmet, a watermelon was Photoshopped to represent his farming heritage.
“Back when I was just hustling, trying to kind of raise money, that was the name of the game,” said Chastain. “That’s what was going to get me on track.”
Chastain, now in his sixth Cup Series season, no longer has to work and scrape for a ride, as evidenced by the cardboard cutouts he no longer has to pay for. He’s made it, and now he can consider what it would mean to win the Daytona 500 in his home state as the only Florida native in the field. He strains to find words again.
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