Ross Chastain on Fan4Racing Radio Thursday, April 5, 2018, at 9 pm ET. Photo – Sean Gardner/Getty Images
Ross Chastain is our guest on Fan4Racing NASCAR Weekend Preview, Thursday, April 5, 2018, at 9 pm ET. Call 929-477-1790 or tweet @Fan4RacingSite or @MoparMJ8 with any questions or comments during our LIVE broadcast.
Coming off a tenth-place finish at Auto Club Speedway a couple of weeks ago, Ross Chastain and JD Motorsports with Gary Keller are now taking their Xfinity Series team to Texas Motor Speedway with momentum and confidence.
So far this season after five races, Chastain has two top-tens with an average finish of 14.4. He and his No. 4 team also finished ninth in their season opener at Daytona in February. Continuous improvement is what this team is all about according to their driver after finishing their best race at Fontana in tenth-place.
“We ran this same car at Vegas, and it was fast there, but my team improved on it so much for this weekend,” said Chastain. “I’m really proud of Johnny Davis and all of the guys who work here. I don’t know how these guys are even awake as hard as they’ve been working to get us through this West Coast Swing. I’m glad to be able to give them a race finish to be proud of.”
The good news for Chastain is in his five Xfinity Series starts he’s run in the top-five in three events, Daytona (first), Atlanta (third), and Phoenix (second). At Fontana, he raced as high as seventh after running as high as 11th at Las Vegas.
To fully understand the improvement for Chastain and his team this season, look no further than his driver rating in 2017 compared to this driver rating in 2018 for the first five races of both seasons.
Location 2017 2018 Variance
Daytona 60.3 73.2 12.9
Atlanta 56.6 71.8 15.2
Las Vegas 52.1 70.9 17.9
Phoenix 62.8 69.5 6.7
Fontana 50.3 90.0 39.7
Average 56.4 75.1 18.5
That’s huge for the JD Motorsports No. 4 team and as the 2018 season continues to unfold their success makes Chastain a driver to watch.
“This is the most confident that I have ever been going to Texas,” said Chastain. “The West Coast Swing really showed how strong my No. 4 team is this year. Now we’ve had two weeks to re-group and work on the cars some more. I’ll have the same car for Texas that I had in California, so it’s going to be another exciting weekend for JD Motorsports.”
The My Bariatric Solutions 300 at Texas Motor Speedway starts at 3 pm ET this Saturday, April 7th with television coverage on FOX.