Ross Chastain made late business decision at COTA: 'Chase Elliott is coming to wreck you'

It didn’t take long for the drama to begin this weekend in the NASCAR Cup Series at COTA, with a wreck on Lap 1 involving Ross Chastain and Chase Elliott drawing some serious scrutiny.

A pair of NASCAR insiders for The Athletic, Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi, broke down the contact and a subsequent potential run-in on The Teardown podcast after the race.

The whole thing began when Ross Chastain dive-bombed Elliott on Lap 1.

Elliott was blunt with his team after the wreck that he was going to wreck Chastain if given the opportunity. Later in the race that opportunity came, but Chastain quickly ducked out of the way when informed that Elliott was coming for him.

“I was watching Elliott’s in-car camera, because obviously I’m obsessed with those now,” Gluck said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, what’s going to happen?’ And you just see Chastain move right out of the way. And (Chase Elliott spotter) Trey Poole and (crew chief) Alan Gustafson are like, ‘Oh, he just moved right out of there. Yeah, he knew what was coming.'”

Neither car made contact in the final laps of the race, with Elliott passing Ross Chastain easily to gain key positioning late.

It was a business decision of sorts for Chastain. Neither driver cared to address the issue after the race, either.

“So I think Elliott apparently, I didn’t talk to Elliott after the race, but I heard from other media people that he didn’t address the Chastain thing, like he didn’t want to talk about it, which is smart by his part, you don’t want to telegraph if you’re going to send somebody,” Gluck said.

In any case, the potential for NASCAR to come down hard on Elliott for intentional retaliation — sort of like Austin Cindric is now under scrutiny for — no longer exists after Chastain’s move to the side.

It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any lingering beef between Ross Chastain and Chase Elliott in the weeks to come, given the drama at COTA.