Ross Chastain isn't worried about Cup Series rivals: 'The best response is in results'

While the noise has quieted down in the second half of the NASCAR season, Ross Chastain is still not super popular among his peers. At least it appears that way at times. Chastain has been in his share of incidents on and off the track, and that’s earned him a reputation at the very least.

Ross Chastain might not be as headline-making as he was, say, around the first Kansas race of the season. After getting a talking to by Rick Hendrick and others, Chastain cooled off. You can see it in his driving at times, perhaps his intensity has dialed back a bit.

For now, when it comes to those comments from other drivers, team owners, fans – Chastain tries to push it to the side. He’s got more important things to do. The Trackhouse Racing driver talked to ESPN’s Ryan McGee about handling that criticism.

“I’m good, man. I’ve got too much work to do. I don’t know what a response to anything said about me is going to do,” Chastain explained to ESPN. It would be easy, sure. It would be easy to fire back on Twitter or go on a radio show or podcast and respond to stuff that’s been said about me, and I am sure that it would get a big response. A lot of clicks and likes and dislikes and whatever. For a few hours, maybe a day. But the next day, you know what? I would still have the same work to do, and now I’d be a day behind because I spent it doing all of that stuff that doesn’t matter. The work matters.”

The best response? Racing.

“The best response is in results, and the only way to achieve results is through hard work.”

Ross Chastain has work to do at the Roval

Coming into the Charlotte Roval, Ross Chastain has to put all of his focus into the work on the track. This is when the results matter the most. He can block out all the noise and ignore all of his haters, but if he doesn’t respond with those results – is it much of a response?

At 28-1 odds, Chastain definitely doesn’t have the best chances of winning at the Roval. Good news, he doesn’t have to win. 10 points from the cutline, a strong top-10 performance with some stage points might be enough to get the job done.

So, here’s some bad news – Chastain has a career-best finish of P22. Yes, that was with Chip Ganassi Racing, but still. Results of P24, P22, P23, and P37 don’t tell us the entire picture. Chastain can be a strong road course racer, but he has to have a car with speed to do it.

Qualifying will be important. Chastain was top-10 in qualifying a year ago. Things didn’t work out well as he fell to P37 due to issues on the track. This is the time to step up and perform.

We saw what Ross Chastain does with his back against the wall at Martinsville last year, what will he do if he faces the same situation at the Roval this weekend?