Nashville repeat a big focus for winless Chastain and Allmendinger

LEBANON, Tenn. — Ross Chastain and AJ Allmendinger are two of the biggest personalities in NASCAR today but 2024 has been a quiet year for both of them.

Coming into Nashville last year, Allmendinger had bagged an easy win in the NASCAR Xfinity Series at COTA. He was also in contention for the Cup Series playoffs.

This season, as a full-time Xfinity Series driver, Allmendinger is winless. Meanwhile, teammate Shane van Gisbergen has two wins – all on road courses that Allmendinger used to rule.

Late-race woes, including a penalty, knocked him out of battling for a win at COTA. Weeks later in Portland, he crashed in practice and only cracked the top-5 as his Kiwi teammate made the winning pass. Then, at Sonoma, he had nothing for his teammate, who won again.

Elsewhere, Allmendinger has been off. Away from drafting tracks and road courses, he has led just a lap and averaged a running position of 16.1.

Compared to last season, Chastain isn’t doing as bad.

This season, he is ninth in points with 453 points, compared to third with 501 points last season. Of his 453 points are 66 stage points, the fewest of anyone in the top 10 in points and 12th-most overall.

Chastain also won twice last season but is still winless.

“I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed. Just trying to put together weekends like we did at those two,” he said. “I feel like small mistakes when we’ve had the speed, and other times some not-so-glaring issues like balance being just a little bit off.”

He makes up for a lack of race pace with an average finish of 12.3 and 16 Top-20 finishes. In each stat line, that’s second to only points leader Chase Elliott. Elliott has an average finish of 9.6 and Top-20 finishes in all 18 races.

Chastain was two laps away from also having Top-20 finishes in every race. At Daytona and Texas, he ran third with the white flag in the air before getting punted back to finishes of 21st and 32nd, respectively, in wrecked heaps.

Turning those finishes outside of the top 20 into third-place finishes would’ve netted him 47 more points and put him two points ahead of his 2023 total after 18 races.

Chastain hasn’t had that bad of a season in the grand scheme of things. He was also winless after 18 races last season. While he isn’t as far above the cutline as he was last season, Chastain is still 93 points above it.

Even Allmendinger is 59 points above the playoff cutline in the Xfinity Series.

Still, they come to Nashville Superspeedway looking for a breakout moment similar to what they had last year.

Last season, Chastain won the pole, led a race-high 99 laps and won for the first time in 2023. It ended a three-race skid, brought on by an incident at Darlington that even drew the ire of Rick Hendrick.

“Last year at Nashville was a career highlight for me for sure. It was one of those weekends that you dream about. We went out and performed really well. Now, there were times I was questioning if I was coming out the other side of a corner. And there was times that I deliberately lifted to get out of a situation that I didn’t think it was worth it. I’m really proud of that and I’ve been trying to put something together like that in a lot of weeks since (laughs),” Chastain said.

Allmendinger finished 10th that night, earning his first Top-10 finish on a regular oval all Cup Series season to that point. Just a day before, he scored a surprise win at the track in the Xfinity Series.

“Being able to win the Xfinity race last year was a huge highlight; getting that guitar that is so iconic and then running inside the top 10 all day in the Cup race. It’s a racetrack that I have enjoyed since we started going to it,” Allmendinger said.

And neither performance was a fluke.

In three NASCAR Cup Series races at Nashville Superspeedway, Ross Chastain leads the field with an average finish of 2.7, three Top-5 finishes (tied with Kyle Larson) and a win (tied with Larson and Chase Elliott). Chastain also has averaged around 43 points per race, behind only Larson.

Outside of his win last year, Allmendinger also led 48 of 188 laps after starting second in 2022 and finished fifth after starting fifth in 2021.

“Nashville has been a great racetrack for us on both the Xfinity and Cup side of our program,” Allmendinger said. Hopefully, we can have the same success that we have had the past few years. Looking forward to the weekend and thinking we can have a good run in both race cars and find the momentum that we need.”

Both drivers will pull double duty. Allmendinger will race for Kaulig Racing in each series. Meanwhile, Chastain will race for DGM Racing in the Xfinity Series.

Two weeks ago, he finished Top 10 with them in the Xfinity Series. In the Cup Series, Chastain boasts speed on intermediate tracks like Nashville.

The races where he led the most laps this season were at Kansas Speedway (43) and Texas (33). His best finish all season – fourth – came at Las Vegas.

“Now, we’ve had shots at other ones, for instance, this year at Las Vegas comes to mind. If I don’t speed on pit road, we have a shot to race for the win. We were as fast as the 5 (Kyle Larson) and 45 (Tyler Reddick), we were right there with them,” Chastain said.

Chastain and Allmendinger hope to produce a different verse of the same song they played last year in the Music City.

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