Hail Melon

The GameCube Had Another Line

Years earlier, Chastain and his brother had discovered what generations of racing-game players eventually learn: sometimes the fastest way through a corner is to quit worrying about the corner.

If the game allows it, keep the throttle down, throw the car against the outside wall and let the barrier keep the thing pointed roughly where the track goes. Everybody else slows down and turns while you scrape along the scenery and arrive at the other end considerably sooner.

Outstanding racecraft when the repair bill consists of pushing a reset button.

A NASCAR Cup car is somewhat less forgiving.

Ross had a real Chevrolet, real suspension, real sheet metal and a real concrete wall. He also had two corners left before his championship opportunity disappeared.

The old video-game trick had been sitting in his memory for years.

This seemed like an excellent time to see whether bad ideas scaled up.

Ross Decided Turning Was Optional

Coming down the backstretch for the final time, Chastain grabbed fifth gear while everybody ahead prepared to do what drivers had been doing at Martinsville for generations.

They slowed down for Turn 3.

Ross did not.

He aimed the No. 1 Chevrolet toward the outside wall, planted the right side against the concrete and stayed in the throttle. Martinsville Speedway had just become part of the steering system.

The wall kept the Chevrolet pointed roughly where Ross wanted to go while everybody else lifted, braked and turned. Sheet metal scraped. Suspension pieces took loads Chevrolet had never intended. The right side of the car was being sacrificed one panel at a time.

Everybody else was negotiating Turn 3.

Ross was using Turn 3 as a guardrail.

Then the ridiculous part became obvious.

He was passing cars.

Five Positions. Two Corners.

Chastain entered the final corners running tenth. One car disappeared behind him, then another, while the No. 1 Chevrolet stayed pinned against the outside wall and kept coming.

He came out fifth on the track.

Five positions in two corners without making any useful attempt to turn either one.

That was already enough to make the stunt ridiculous.

Then somebody looked at the stopwatch.

Chastain’s final lap took 18.845 seconds, nearly nine-tenths quicker than Kyle Larson’s pole-winning qualifying lap.

Not quicker than somebody stuck in traffic.

Quicker than the lap that had won the pole.

That is not finding a better apex. That is discovering the outside retaining wall has been hiding a qualifying setup from everybody for seventy-five years.

Denny Hamlin was one of the cars Chastain reached before the line. Hamlin had spent the afternoon using all the recognized methods for reaching the championship race.

Then a watermelon farmer arrived around the outside with the throttle pinned and several hundred feet of concrete helping with the driving.

Ross beat him to the line and earned enough points to claim the final Championship 4 position. Post-race inspection later adjusted the finishing order and officially credited Chastain with fourth, but the important arithmetic was already settled.

Ross was going to Phoenix.

Denny wasn’t.

Now Everybody Knew It Worked

The Chevrolet did not emerge from the experiment looking ready for another hundred laps. Chastain later said the right-front suspension was broken, and once he had committed to riding the wall he knew pulling away halfway through the stunt was unlikely to improve anything.

That was not the larger problem.

The larger problem was that everybody had just watched it work.

Before that lap, wall-riding belonged comfortably with video-game shortcuts and ridiculous things drivers joked about trying. Chastain had demonstrated that under exactly the wrong circumstances, it could become the fastest route around Martinsville.

The move quickly acquired the name Hail Melon, which suited a last-chance maneuver performed by a driver from a watermelon-farming family.

Then NASCAR had to consider the next fellow.

One driver doing it once was spectacular. Twenty drivers using the outside wall whenever they needed a position would turn Martinsville into a demolition derby with playoff points.

For 2023, NASCAR announced that another intentional wall-riding maneuver like Chastain’s would draw a penalty under its existing safety rules.

That is one of the better ways to know a piece of Racing Shenanigans succeeded.

Before you did it, nobody had bothered stopping you.

Afterward, somebody found a rule.

Sometimes the Wrong Way Is Faster

Ross Chastain needed positions. Martinsville did not have enough ordinary racetrack left to get them.

So he used the part everybody else had spent seventy-five years trying not to hit.

The wall damaged the Chevrolet, offended several generations of driving instruction and turned one of NASCAR’s oldest tracks into a giant version of a childhood video game for about two corners.

It also sent Ross Chastain to the Championship 4.

Everybody else slowed down, turned left and drove Martinsville the way Martinsville was supposed to be driven.

Ross remembered the GameCube.

For one lap, the fastest way around the corner was to quit trying to make the corner.