Denny Hamlin exposes how Ross Chastain had the ‘fastest car by a chunk’ at Coca-Cola 600

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin has shared his thoughts Ross Chastain quickly becoming faster than he have been throughout the 2025 season.

Denny Hamlin exposes how Ross Chastain had the ‘fastest car by a chunk’ at Coca-Cola 600

Denny Hamlin and Ross Chastain (Via IMAGO)

Trackhouse Racing helped Ross Chastain produced one of the best races in the history of NASCAR on Sunday, at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He came into the weekend with a solid car, before a wreck owing to tire failure resulted in a wreck that almost ruined his chances. But the Trackhouse No:1 Crew burned the midnight oil to field a backup car as strong as the primary.

Ross Chastain started the race dead last, P40, and slowly as the race progressed made his way up the track, taking advantage of the misfortunes and mistakes of his rivals alongside his superior pace. With just three laps left in the race, he overtook William Byron, who was strong whole day for the win. JGR veteran Denny Hamlin, on his podcast analyzed the win and highlighted how Trackhouse made a significant speed gain.

Hamlin pointed out that though, Chastain has been one of the top guys of the season, he was often outperforming the car sometimes till Charlotte. He asserted that unlike the slower cars they fielded earlier in the season, Trackhouse came in full gun blazing from the practice session on Friday and the finding has rewarded on Sunday.

He’s consistently the top guy over there. But we need to give credit to Trackhouse this weekend. We’ve been pretty hard on them in their lack of speed, lack of everything, to start the year, but they absolutely showed up here. The No. 1 was the fastest car in practice by a chunk, not a little bit.

Denny Hamlin said via Actions Detrimental podcast.

He believes the wreck during the first session proves the team were doing something aggressive on the car, that helped them to win. They car had real speed and using the 100 extra miles of racing Coca Cola 600 featured, he was able to win.

When he wrecked, you look at the left rear-tire, they were being a little aggressive on something, and that’s where the speed was coming from. But I think that they proved, by driving towards the front, over the course of [the entire race], and you heard Ross say just it took the entire race to get there, him starting dead-last. They had real speed.

Denny Hamlin added.

It was not just Chastain, his teammate Shane van Gisbergen was tiring as well as he finished P14, after racing a lot of time in the top 30. Daniel Suarez though had a disappointing night compared to the other two.

Denny Hamlin asserts teams will be investigating Trackhouse

Talking about the impressive performance, Hamlin highlighted that every team in the garage is curious about how fast the No:1 car was on Sunday and how they were able pull of the magic.  The team will be hoping to have the advantage for themselves to win more races in the remaining races of the 2025 season.

Denny Hamlin
Denny Hamlin (Via IMAGO)

All the teams certainly will be checking things out, investigating to figure out, you know, where the speed came from overnight. It just didn’t happen overnight, right? They could’ve been working on something that, you know, some sort of new setup or something like that, that they just now could get in the car.

Denny Hamlin said.

The JGR veteran will be one of the many looking into the set-up change, not just for his No:11 crew but also for the team he co-owns, 23XI Racing. It would be interesting to see how everything is going to playout for Trackhouse Racing with the newfound pace in the upcoming races.

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