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Motorsport

Trackhouse reveals "Herculean effort" to prepare backup car ahead of big win

Ross Chastain TrackHouse Justin Marks Logan Riely TrackHouse Racing Chevrolet

Perhaps more impressive than Ross Chastain driving from last to first to win the Coca-Cola 600 was the work his team had to put in just get the race-winning car prepared on Sunday.

Chastain crashed due to a tire failure in practice, forcing the Trackhouse Racing Team to scramble as they prepared the backup car. The car was meant to be a backup for next weekend's race at Nashville and many changed needed to be and overnight. Crew chief Phil Surgen admitted to only sleeping for about "two-and-a-half hours" before the marathon race on Sunday.

Chastain himself stayed with the team until around 10pm on Saturday when Trackhouse competition director Tony Lunders was "literally pushing me out, saying, 'go home, go to sleep, I need you to be ready tomorrow night.'"

While Chastain finally went home to rest, the team remained, burning the midnight oil as they prepared the car that would ultimately win NASCAR's longest race. But before they could even get to work on that. nearly 90 minutes were spent on the primary car before they realized they weren't going to be able to fix it.

"As we start pulling parts off, it just became more evident that there was a section of the rear frame that was bent probably beyond repair," explained Surgen [Chastain's crew chief]. "Then at that moment it became a necessity to go to a backup car.

"Unfortunately, that was probably an hour or an hour and a half after we got to the garage and had already started working on repairing the primary car. Although it took a long time to identify, by the time we got all the parts and the car disassembled to the point where we could fully see all the damage, it was evident we needed to go back to the car."

People dropped everything to come and help

Ross Chastain, Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet (Photo by: Logan Riely / Getty Images)

Surgen also explained how it was a total team effort in the end as around 30 people came in to help after taking the backup car back to the race shop.

"We had obviously all the road crew that was at the track was there. We had engine support from ECR. We had shop guys that were at concerts and ball games and everything that just dropped what they were doing, came to the shop," revealed Surgen.

"Like I said, probably 30 people there at 8:30pm (Saturday) night. As the night wore on and different stages of the process kind of evolved, we sent some of those guys home, and the last of us, there were probably eight or ten of us that left at 2:30am last night. The first guys got back there at 5:30am."

What needed to be done

But what actually needed to be done in order to get the backup car race-ready? Surgen said they began with a "fully assembled car" but it had no engine in it. There were countless other changes needed to get it ready for 600 miles at Charlotte when it was only meant for a 400-mile race at Nashville.

"When we got there, there was certainly a ton of work to do. We put a good bit of interior in it. We changed the transaxle. We had to use the engine from the primary car that was at the racetrack. Then there's the wrap, final set on suspension, final set on the body, and then final scale and such, all those last-minute adjustments. Number of hours, it's hard to say. Like I mentioned earlier to the gentleman over there, we had 30 people working there for a while, and into the night that dwindled down to maybe ten. You know, it was a ton of man hours in the last 36 hours that went into the car we had today.

Team owner Justin Marks praises the remarkable effort

Ross Chastain, Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet (Photo by: David Jensen / Getty Images)

Team owner Justin Marks was stunned by the effort by both driver and team as they celebrated their first win of the 2025 season.

"This weekend I think was a master class in never giving up and grinding," said Marks. "It wasn't just the #1 Team that built that car last night. It was people from all corners of the organization that said, I'll drop what I'm doing and drive to the shop and help, because we've all been working so hard the last month, month and a half to sort of turn this team around

"I stood in front of everybody at this organization the first day that I took ownership of it back at the end of 2021, and I said, you know, We have everything that we need to be successful here. We just have to work together. We have to believe in each other, and we have to fundamentally believe that we can do it, that we can go win big races and contend for championships. If we support each other and go the extra mile and do whatever it takes, then we can get there.

"I think this weekend was a beautiful expression of that, and I am so -- I don't want to sound romantic, but I am just so unbelievably proud of everybody because what they did this weekend was very, very, very difficult. It was truly a team win. Putting a race car together -- building a race car last night, bringing it to the racetrack, starting last, making good changes, good pit stops, good strategy, and just putting it on the shoulders of our amazing race car driver, Ross Chastain, to punch it into victory lane. It's incredible."