October 31, 2022 | By Lee Spencer

Chastain makes magic with last-lap move, but will we see it again?

Any driver who has ever owned a video game system no doubt imagined making the last lap move Ross Chastain executed Sunday night at Martinsville to advance to the NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4.

But very few have the talent or moxie to perform it with such precision and leave the competition stunned in amazement—including Denny Hamlin, who watched his hopes of transferring to the Championship 4 for a fourth-consecutive year disappear as the No. 1 Chevrolet rocketed past him at the start-finish line.

Entering the final 25 laps, four points separated Chastain and Hamlin. On the final lap, Hamlin was fifth, Chastain 10th and the margin was two points in the No. 11 team’s favor. Then Chastain held the throttle wide open entering Turn 3 and floored it around the wall in Turns 3 and 4 to finish 0.073-seconds ahead of Hamlin at the line. 

“Great move,” Hamlin said. “Brilliant. Certainly a great move. When you have no other choice, it certainly is easy to do that. But well-executed.

“It’s the rules we play. You’ve got to race inside these walls and he found a way to do it better than us on that last lap.”

Ryan Blaney spent most of the season in the top five in points until the Round of 8. He finished on the podium Sunday but fell short of transferring to the final four. Still, he was smiling when he reflected on Chastain’s move.

“I just saw it, and I guess I wish I should have done it,” Blaney said. “I guess we’ll all start doing it now coming down to the end of the race.”

Joey Logano, the first driver to transfer into the Championship 4 Round, described Chastain’s maneuver as “way better” than Carl Edwards' infamous attempt at Kansas Speedway in 2008 when he battled Jimmie Johnson for the win but fell short after bouncing off the wall in Turn 4.

“He kicked Carl’s butt on that one,” Logano said with a chuckle. “It’s something we’ve all talk about—I don’t know about all, but I’ve talked about it—but have never had the ‘had-to-do’ moment to do it like Ross did. And Ross did it, and congratulations to him. That was amazing.

“We need to do something to make sure that it doesn’t happen every week, though. I don’t want to say that’s not really racing, but if the whole field put it up against the wall because now we’ve all seen it... Now you’ve opened the box. We need a rule to not do that because you have to protect us from ourselves, now, because we’re all forced to do it and that’s not necessarily a good thing.” 

Chastain was well within his right to make that move. Nowhere in the NASCAR rule book does it stipulate otherwise. And really, how could the sanctioning body enforce anyone trying to duplicate the process? Officiating the action would surely come down to a judgment call. 

Four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon watched Chastain’s amazing move from pit road. He agrees with Logano that NASCAR needs to set a precedent before a driver takes it to the next level.

“How could you miss it? I thought his throttle stuck,” Gordon said. “It did—but on purpose. Larson tried something similar at Darlington, but it didn’t work. It wasn’t the full commitment in Turn 3. I assume those things inspire creativity, but I never thought I would see it. 

“I’ll be curious if I ever see it again. It’s one of those moves that was pretty incredible and worked well, but we probably have to stop it from happening on a regular basis.”

NASCAR Chief Operating Officer Steve O'Donnell basically offered a "No harm, no foul," response to Chastain's actions.

"We've had a number of discussions internally about that move and all the 'what ifs,'"  O'Donnell said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. "When you look at it, it was within the bounds of the rule book."

Without carving a black-and-white statute in the rulebook, the sanctioning body will be hard-pressed to dissuade competitors from repeating the move going forward. Certainly, they could make the point of offering Chastain an “A” for effort but insist the drivers do not travel down that slippery slope in the future.

With Chase Briscoe entering the penultimate race in the cellar among the Elite 8 drivers, his crew chief tried a different type of Hail Mary to advance the driver of the No. 14 Ford in the final round. But choosing not to take tires on the final pit stop wasn’t nearly as dramatic as Chastain’s strategy. 

“All of us have done it on some video games, whatnot,” Briscoe said. “He executed it well. Curious to see what kind of wormhole that opens up at the end of these races going forward.”

Of course, there are always the safety implications associated with a move of that nature. 

“It was awesome to see it actually worked,” Logano said. “We never knew it would work. We were always worried that someone would climb into the catch fence—and get into the catch fence. It takes some cojones to do that. It was impressive (laughs).”

And work, it did. And the crowd erupted in glee as team owner Justin Marks celebrated Trackhouse Racing’s first trip to the championship round.

“When I came off Turn 4, I saw the 11,” Chastain said. “I ran into the back of the 6 (Keselowski) again. I knew it should work. My brain could not comprehend, my bandwidth was shot when I entered Turn 3 and I grabbed fifth gear. Everything went blurry. I couldn't comprehend it. I had to ask (if he transferred). 

“I saw Justin and Brook (Davenport), our gas man, grabbing each other and celebrating on the big screen in the infield. I thought that must be a good sign.

But, yeah, I questioned it. When I grabbed fifth, I was like, Well, it's going now. My foot stayed down. I committed to the wall early. It didn't slow down, so it worked.”

Chastain topped the highlight reel on Sunday and perhaps for the 2022 Cup season. Sunday night’s NFL game featured his last-lap drive and ESPN producers queued it up Sports Center.

Still, after the drivers had time to process the chain of events, some questioned the wisdom of similar attempts going forward. Could a driver try something like that at Phoenix—especially with the title on the line?

“I don’t think we should be able to do it,” Logano added. “It’s opened up now to where it can happen anywhere. And I don’t think that’s good for the sport.”

While the drivers debate "what is good for the sport," ultimately Chastain's "Haul the Wall" was heralded by many motorsports mavens as the move of the year. The exposure NASCAR received in the aftermath was immense. Finally, the sport experienced that long-awaited Game 7 moment.

Undoubtedly, we'll be watching Chastain's rim ride on highlight reels for decades to come. And for those of us fortunate enough to witness the performance, it's one we'll never forget.