Trackhouse Racing's Justin Marks has 'difficult' talk with Ross Chastain after latest incident
Justin Marks spent his Monday having difficult conversations in the aftermath of Ross Chastain colliding with Kyle Larson at Darlington Raceway.
The Trackhouse Racing founder made clear to SiriusXM NASCAR Radio that the organization supports Chastain, but there are things to clean up. Chastain leads the NASCAR Cup Series points standings but lost an opportunity to win on Sunday at Darlington when he admitted he turned himself up into Larson off a restart with six laps to go as they battled for the lead.
“Ross drove a great race,” Marks said. “He made good decisions in the first and second stages in not racing guys super hard, letting a couple of people go, just kind of managing that give and take and everything. And then it all kind of fell apart at the end.”
Chastain and Larson had been trading blows over a few restarts before the crash. Wanting to push Larson up the track and squeeze him near the wall, Chastain ended up making contact with Larson and getting turned across the nose of the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. He finished 29th after leading 93 laps.
“(If) Ross clears Kyle and makes that pass and wins throwback weekend at Darlington seven days after getting into a scuffle on pit road, the guy is a legend,” Marks said. “He’s got the skill to do that. He’s got the ability to do that. The result was just bad. It was just bad for everybody. It was bad for Hendrick, it was bad for Chevrolet, and it was bad for Trackhouse and Ross as the points leader.
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“This has been my life (today). We have addressed it. We’ve had many conversations with different people today - some difficult conversations and I think the important message here is that we are a believer in Ross’s talent. That’s obvious.
“He’s very fast. But he’s got some things he’s got to clean up, I’ll be totally honest with you, and we today started the process of more aggressively handling that with our partners, with Ross, and with our team. Not because we’re necessarily mad at him, but there is so much opportunity here, and we are addressing it.
“I’m going to take a more active role in it. I love the kid and I love the opportunity of giving every single person that works at Trackhouse to be able to put a championship run together. But there’s just stuff that needs to be cleaned up, and it’s a process he’s going to have to start going through sooner rather than later.
“We are very supportive of him, we’re very supportive of this team, and we are addressing it.”
Some of his peers have scrutinized Chastain over the last year about how hard he races. On Sunday night, Rick Hendrick, Larson’s owner, said Chastain does not have to be that aggressive and if nothing changes, it will be hard to win a championship with so many enemies.