Ross Chastain says pair of Ganassi top-10s "a calming factor"
Team owner Chip Ganassi may be out of NASCAR at the end of the 2021 season, but his current drivers in the Cup Series show no signs of slowing down.
Both Ross Chastain and Kurt Busch showed good speed in Sunday’s race at Road America and remained in contention through 62-lap event on the 4.048-mile, 14-turn road course. It was the first Cup series race at the track in 65 years.
Chastain ended up seventh and Busch fourth, marking just the third time both drivers have finished in the top-10 this season and all three times have come in the last five races.
Chastain earned a career-best finish of second at Nashville two weeks ago while Busch’s fourth-place finish on Sunday tied his best finish of the season (fourth at Daytona Road Course).
“Seventh-place here at Road America. We got good stage points and a good finish. Proud of the effort from all the men and women at Chip Ganassi Racing to bring two really fast hotrods,” Chastain said.
“Kurt Busch was fast and we were, too. We were around each other all day and had speed passing a lot of cars.”
Chastain said he believed the strong performance on track Sunday could serve as a “calming factor” at the shop following Ganassi’s announcement last week that he was selling his organization to Justin Marks and Team Trackhouse at season’s end.
Both Chastain and Busch do not currently have deals in place for beyond the 2021 season.
“We’re still going to bring fast cars. It’s been a crazy week,” he said. “We still race for Chip Ganassi and Team Chevy; and we’re going to keep pushing and keep trying to win.”
Busch said the race and the entire weekend at Road America was “fun.”
“I really enjoyed Road America and just the whole challenge of running here; posting good laps early with fresh tires and then managing the tires on the long run,” Busch said. “I knew our strategy was to go for stage points; which man, I was going to have to work hard today.
“I gave it everything I could. I’m just really proud of our group to come here. I worked through the simulator work and worked through everything we could. I put one tire wrong (on the track) today and gave up one point to (Kyle) Larson in Stage 2.
“I really enjoyed coming up here today and the Wisconsin people were great.”
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