Melon Man wins in the Heartland
KANSAS CITY, Ks. — “Melon Man” Ross Chastain broke out the watermelon and smashed playoff drivers’ hopes of an early lock-in in Sunday’s Hollywood Casino 400.
Chastain took his No. 1 car to victory lane in the Heartland, passing the No. 19 car of Martin Truex Jr. for the win on a restart with 21 laps to go in the 267-lap affair at Kansas Speedway.
It wasn’t as easy as that pass. Chastain still had to hold off the No. 24 car of William Byron, whom he bested by just under four tenths of a second for his first NASCAR Cup Series win since Phoenix in November 2023.
While the win comes a few weeks late for Chastain, as he went winless in the regular season and missed the playoffs, a Cup Series win is a Cup Series win.
“It’s a huge deal. For us on this No. 1 team, it’s what Cup racing is all about. That’s what Justin Marks and Pitbull bought into NASCAR with Trackhouse is to do stuff like this to disrupt. And look, there’s been times this year where we couldn’t have disrupted the minnow pond outside Darlington, let alone a Cup race. It’s hard. It’s really tough to come and do this,” Chastain said.
Chastain led five times for 52 laps, notably battling Kyle Busch’s No. 8 car and swapping the lead five times in a battle that played out from lap 177 to lap 235.
On lap 235, Busch spun while trying to lap Chase Briscoe. Chastain was almost involved in the incident but snuck by to take the caution.
On pit road during that caution, Martin Truex Jr. took the lead from Chastain and lined up behind the No. 6 of Brad Keselowski, who stayed out for the lap 241 restart. Truex passed Keselowski and survived a short run but couldn’t hang on during the final restart with 21 to go.
Truex made one final charge to the front at the end, running three tenths of a second faster than both Chastain and Byron.
Still, Truex came up nine tenths of a second shy of getting a swansong win.
“I just didn’t quite get the restart I needed or the help on the restart that I needed. Just not quite good enough on the short runs all day on the restarts. It took us 10 to 15 laps to get going. A couple of those guys could get by us, so that’s kind of what happened there. The 1 and the 24 got away and then we were catching them back, but just ran out of time,” he said.
Byron was frustrated that he couldn’t get to Chastain. However, he felt like the second-place finish validated the strength of his team.
“Damn it, I wanted that one really bad. It just sucks, man. You’re so close, and you know going to Talladega you know what that is. So just sucks, but proud of the effort,” he said. “Brought an awesome car. Proud of all my guys. They’ve been working their tails off. We’ve gotten a lot of BS over the summer from the outside and just I know how good this team is, and I know what we’re capable of. So this is a great day to build on.”
TOP-10 FINISHERS (LAP 267): Ross Chastain, William Byron, Martin Truex Jr., Ryan Blaney, Ty Gibbs, Alex Bowman, Christopher Bell, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, Zane Smith
STAGE ONE TOP-10 (LAP 80): Byron, Joey Logano, Blaney, Hamlin, Bell, Gibbs, Austin Cindric, Truex, Bowman, Carson Hocevar
STAGE TWO TOP-10 (LAP 165): Bowman, Gibbs, Blaney, Byron, Brad Keselowski, Hocevar, Kyle Busch, Truex, Elliott, Chase Briscoe
THROUGH THE FIELD
Corey LaJoie netted a quiet 15th-place finish in his first start with Rick Ware Racing. Starting with Kansas, LaJoie moved over to the No. 51 Ford, swapping rides with Justin Haley who moved to Spire Motorsports. LaJoie is auditioning for the No. 51 ride in 2025 while Haley has a multi-year deal with Spire.
Haley is grateful this is just race one of many to come. He finished 33rd, one lap down, after a bizarre-looking wreck on lap 150. Radio communication revealed a miscommunication with spotter Stefan Parsons, whom he was working with for the first time Sunday.
Kyle Busch finished 19th after his run at trying to extend his historic run of consecutive winning seasons went up in smoke late in the race.
Carson Hocevar was running inside the top-5 before green-flag stops started with around 60 laps to go. However, during his stop, the jack broke, dropping him off of the lead lap and outside of the top-25. The final blow to his day was on lap 244 when he spun off of turn two and wrecked with Todd Gilliland and playoff driver Chase Briscoe.
Hocevar finished 32nd, the last driver on the lead lap.
Playoff drivers outside of the top-10 included: Daniel Suarez (13th), Joey Logano (14th), Chase Briscoe (24th), Tyler Reddick (25th), Kyle Larson (26th), Austin Cindric (34th, four laps down).
Larson popped a right-rear tire in turn one on lap 20 while running inside the top-10. For the rest of the day, crew chief Cliff Daniels formulated plan after plan after plan to fix the car, making double-digit stops by the time the final stage started. A valiant effort but only 26th to show for it.
Ahead of Larson, Reddick struggled all day. He fell from a Top-10 starting spot to 18th once stage two began. Then, he dropped to 23rd but started rallying with some quick lap times near the end of the stage, getting to 18th before a caution flew for Daniel Hemric spinning on lap 145.
Reddick whiffed the top-10 a few times more but handling woes plagued him in the end to put him in 25th.
Reddick joins Cindric below the cutline heading to Talladega Superspeedway next weekend.
After netting stage points in the first stage, Austin Cindric had issues on pit road and dropped to 30th. Near the end of stage two, Cindric rallied to 14th until a crash on the backstretch killed his chances at doing anything else the rest of the day.
Harrison Burton and John Hunter Nemechek’s cars are going back to the NASCAR R&D Center for further inspection.
NASCAR Cup Series Points Standings After Kansas
- William Byron 3074 (+34 points to the cutline)
- Ryan Blaney 3068 (+28)
- Christopher Bell 3068 (+28)
- Kyle Larson 3058 (+18)
- Denny Hamlin 3051 (+11)
- Alex Bowman 3048 (+8)
- Chase Elliott 3044 (+4)
- Joey Logano 3044 (+4)
- Tyler Reddick 3040 (-4 points to the cutline)
- Daniel Suarez 3030 (-14)
- Chase Briscoe 3019 (-25)
- Austin Cindric 3015 (-29)
NEXT: YellaWood 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, Sunday, Oct. 6 (2 p.m. ET; NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Ryan Blaney is the defending winner of this race. Tyler Reddick won at Talladega earlier this year during the race in April.
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Jonathan Fjeld View All
Jonathan Fjeld is the co-owner of the The Racing Experts, LLC. He has been with TRE since 2010.
A Twin Valley, MN, native, Fjeld became a motorsports fan at just three years old (first race was the 2002 Pennsylvania 500). He worked as a contributor and writer for TRE from 2010-18. Since then, he has stepped up and covered 24 NASCAR race weekends and taken on a larger role with TRE. He became the co-owner and managing editor in 2023 and has guided the site to massive growth in that time.
Fjeld has covered a wide array of stories and moments over the years, including Kevin Harvick's final Cup Series season, the first NASCAR national series disqualification in over 50 years, Shane van Gisbergen's stunning win in Chicago and the first Cup Series race at Road America in 66 years – as well as up-and-coming drivers' stories and stories from inside the sport, like the tech it takes for Hendrick Motorsports to remain a top-tier team.
Currently, he resides in Albuquerque, N.M., where he works for KOB 4, an NBC station. He works as a digital producer and does on-air reports. He loves spending time with friends and family, playing and listening to music, exploring new places, being outdoors, reading books and writing among other activities. You can email him at fjeldjonathan@gmail.com