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Ross Chastain eats watermelon while celebrating in victory lane after winning a NASCAR Truck series race Sunday, June 16, 2019, at Iowa Speedway in Newton, Iowa.
One race was all Ross Chastain had in mind when he got behind the wheel in a NASCAR truck in 2011 to realize his dream.
His next stop figured to be the family watermelon farm, where Chastains have made their living dating back to the 1700s.
But a 10th-place finish led to more opportunities, which led to a ride in the NASCAR Cup series. Now, Chastain’s preferred method of promoting the family business is through destruction, not creation.
The well-documented story of Chastain’s victory celebration played out two weeks ago when he won the truck race at Darlington and then climbed on top of his ride to hurl a watermelon to the ground. He has not had that opportunity in the Cup series since last season’s final race at Phoenix but will have one ready just in case at Sunday’s Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison.
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“I’d been racing as a hobby in south Florida, and we wanted to do one truck race as a bucket-list thing,” Chastain said. “One race turned into four turned into a full season. I was going to farm. It’s what I wanted to do. That was going to be my path.”
Instead, he’s seeking a Cup championship from his 10th-place standing entering the weekend after placing as high as second in 2022.
Chastain has raced and won in all three NASCAR series with four victories in a Cup car, two in Xfinity and five in the Truck series. One of those truck wins came at WWTR in 2019, allowing him to splatter a melon.
“I’ve spent more time in the Truck series than any other series,” he said. “But I do it for the competition. It’s hard to win, and we were able to at Darlington. I don’t care if it’s a Cup car or a wheelbarrow, I want to win.”
Chastain grew up racing and working some on the farm. The intent was never to pursue a driving career but to enjoy the hobby for what it was.
It was a family enterprise from ownership of the car to expenses incurred for tires and a motor and upkeep. Chastain didn’t have a pit crew, per se, but listed his parents, grandfather and aunt as people who helped with the operation.
The initial truck race was an endeavor along the same lines — a planned one-off to scratch off life’s to-do list. But Chastain went and finished 10th, and momentum began to build toward something bigger.
“My dad was open with me,” he said. “When I started racing, he said not to get any ideas of being in NASCAR. I raced against other kids who talked about how they were going to make it. In 2014, I started to make a small living doing it — nothing crazy, but I had enough foundation to survive.”
Soon, he was able to smash a watermelon here and there.
The family business can be traced back eight generations to the arrival of Pierre Chastain from France in the 1700s. As Ross Chastain tells the story, Pierre began farming with his sons in Virginia. The family eventually moved to South Carolina, Georgia and then Florida in the 1950s.
He makes clear this isn’t an “Old MacDonald” type of farm but a mass commercial enterprise that supplies melons to stores across the country. Chastain would sometimes skip school and help his father on the farm. It was the obvious career path.
That changed dramatically, and he has been in the Cup series since 2018, the last three seasons with Trackhouse Racing.
Chastain has five top 10 finishes in 2024, with a best of fourth at Las Vegas. He finished eighth and 22nd in the two years of the Enjoy Illinois 300.
“There’s a lot of potential,” he said of his team. “We’re close. We need a little balance and speed. We’re showing glimmers and can’t quite hit the bull’s-eye to get the balance right.”