Chastain brothers enjoying the ride with title in sight

AVONDALE, Ariz. – Chad Chastain was sitting at a Beef ‘O’ Brady’s near his Florida home last Sunday, watching on TV as his brother, Ross, pursued his bid for a first NASCAR championship at Martinsville Speedway. His ears were trained on the No. 1 Trackhouse Racing team’s scanner while the broadcast feed played on a several-second delay.

The older Chastain had already been one of the Cup Series’ biggest surprises this year, mounting a serious playoff run in his first season with the upstart Trackhouse team. But his biggest stunner was yet to come.

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Listening to the team radio gave Chad Chastain little indication that a barrier-scraping stroke of brilliance had occurred when spotter Brandon McReynolds told his driver to keep the No. 1 Chevrolet up against the wall.

“And I put my head down on the table and thought, ‘Well, it’s over. We had a great year. We’ll go get ’em at Phoenix and try to win the race,’ ” Chad Chastain recalled Saturday morning in the Phoenix Raceway garage. “And then I look back up, and he was sailing off into Turn 3, and I didn’t know what was going on. Then the whole restaurant erupted.”

By now, the video footage of the late-race heroics that propelled Ross Chastain to championship contention in Sunday’s season finale (3 p.m. ET, NBC, Peacock, MRN, SiriusXM) has made the global rounds, replaying the mystifying, bonkers maneuver that the two brothers practiced as kids virtually on a long-ago game console. But this is real life – both for the Martinsville move and the two Floridian watermelon farmers who now find themselves in the Arizona desert on one of stock-car racing’s biggest stages.

“Honestly, it didn’t sink in until about Wednesday morning for me,” said Chad Chastain, who turned 24 years old the day after his brother’s triumphant move. “It took the rest of Sunday night, watched the video 100 times as everybody has, woke up Monday morning. I’m brushing my teeth, and then I’m watching it again. Just scrolling Twitter, they’ve got it on, it’s popping up every time.

“Just even like Monday night and Tuesday afternoon, it was starting to sink in like, holy cow. We’ve just had a great season. Ross is racing for a Cup owners’ and drivers’ championship this weekend, and it’s amazing. I always thought if everything went just right, we’d make it here. We never thought it’d actually happen. It’s so rare.”

The moment that turned conventional racing wisdom on its ear traces its start back to the brothers’ upbringing in the Sunshine State.

The two grew up with farming in their blood, a long-held family tradition that spans several generations and continues today. But the two siblings also found an early passion for speed, racing with cousins on four-wheelers. “We’d pick two trees and just go turn laps,” Chad Chastain said. “Just had a blast doing that kind of stuff….