According to Sportsline’s prediction model, Ross Chastain is a major underdog with 37-1 odds for a Brickyard 400 triumph. Despite what some would call a longshot bet, Chastain must hope all those odds play in his favor. Because once the green wave arrives on Sunday, he will have only 5 races left to lock in that penultimate playoff spot.

If not a win, then at least a top-5—something must arrive quickly for the Melon Man. After all, his last finish inside the first five spots came almost a month ago. Since then, he’s had two DNFs and received a lot of criticism for losing out on his magic and merely existing inside the bubble without a guaranteed shot at the championship. But all that never bothered Ross Chastain. And if his words are to be taken seriously, we might very well witness a ‘Hail Melon’ upset at the hallowed grounds of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this Sunday.

Ross Chastain’s urgent need for speed at the Brickyard 400

Chastain does not have the best of records at the Brickyard’s oval layout. The last three times he raced here, his best-ever finish was a P17 at the 2020 edition of the Brickyard 400. He hasn’t done too well on the 2.439-mile road circuit configuration either, as his best finish these past three years has also coincidentally been a P17, which came the previous season.

To get some extra practice, the Melon Man reconnected with his roots earlier on Friday to run the truck race just 15 minutes away at IRP. It was his first truck race at the venue since he made his NASCAR debut there in 2011. Chastain finished P11 in that event.

However, after qualifying for the Indianapolis Cup race in his #1 Trackhouse car on Saturday, Chastain will be rolling off the grid from P28. His teammate Daniel Suarez will start in P25. Now, although the #1 team is statistically outperforming the #99 team towards the latter half of the regular season, what it lacks that the other possesses is a race win. If Suarez finishes the next five races in a spot below P30, he will still be heading to the playoffs.

Chastain faces starkly contrasting fortunes, sitting only 27 points above the cutline in that last unconfirmed spot. So when a journalist asked if he’d lost “sleep” over his current circumstances where he’s “bouncing around the bubble, not having that win” to lock himself into the playoffs, he had quite an honest reply.

“It’s not about the points for me,” Ross Chastain said via Frontstretch. “It’s about the speed. I just want to go fast. That’s that’s why I do this. I’ve heard some of my heroes say it years ago. If we’re not good enough to make it then… we don’t belong in there. So I believe that we have the foundation to do it.”

While answering a separate question from a reporter, Ross told them that it’s not like he completely ignores the points table, and how it is “simple math.” But he then opined with some unanswered sentiments from Pocono: “If I was thinking about points, I probably wouldn’t have wrecked last week. I just wasn’t thinking about it.” 

Regardless, it appeared as if Ross Chastain was doing his best to remind himself exactly who he is, when he said, “We just have to put together speed and the race cars and grip. Like here, I’m off the gas and on the brake pedal because I feel like I’m crash. And so with the changes we made overnight, we feel like we’re in a better direction, and we’ll find out a little bit here. But mainly during the race if if I can get in the corner with other guys and the other cars.”

Laying his emphatic conclusion out for everyone to hear, Chastain then explained, “So that’s what I lose sleep over is waking up and going to work to try to figure out how to drive my race car faster.” Although quite a respectable thought by the Melon Man, some would consider this a sign of weakness, a lack of his once-prevalent aggression.

This might result in other drivers taking advantage of his recent bad luck and potentially costing him his still-unconfirmed spot in the 2024 playoffs. Bubba Wallace is not too far; he is only separated from Chastain by 27 points and the bubble cut-line, so the concerns are duly warranted. But is the Melon Man playing into that speculative narrative?

Unlucky streak, courtesy of Hendrick Motorsports

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Many believe that Chastain is getting “comfortable,” if not complacent, about his present situation. Yet, while answering a question to the media in a pre-race presser at the Brickyard, he denounced that opinion with a strong counter.

He said, “We’re here to win. That’s what we wake up every day to do. It’s what 150+ employees at Trackhouse, and everybody, the brainpower at GM and Chevrolet, that’s why we are in our positions and doing our careers, and going through our lives chasing wins. And you don’t win, this is a sport that rewards winning. So we’re looking to get back to that.”

Truthfully, Chastain looked minutes away from victory multiple times this season; he has just been unlucky. At the season-opening Daytona 500 race, he was spun out of winner’s contention with only a couple of laps left in front of P2 finisher Alex Bowman.

At Texas, he was involved in an incident with William Byron while aiming to overtake eventual race winner Chase Elliott in the final laps. Then, a couple of months later, at Nashville, Elliott & Byron’s Hendrick teammate Kyle Larson handed Ross Chastain his second DNF of the season just when the latter looked certain to take the lead in overtime from Denny Hamlin.

If one did not know better, he or she would notice that these incidents with Hendrick drivers come way too often for Ross Chastain. We’re sure it’s purely coincidental. But it does bring up the question of Chastain’s equipment at Tier 1 Chevy-backed organization Trackhouse Racing doing a driver like him enough justice.

After all, it takes only a second for the Melon Man to flip the script. But without much-recorded notice of that notion, what do you think is causing Ross Chastain to go winless with 5 races to make the 2024 playoffs? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.