Chastain Ready for Short Track Racing

Early in his young NASCAR career, rookie Ross Chastain has taking a fancy to racing on the tricky short-tracks of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. In three starts on the half-mile bullrings Chastain has finished in tenth, seventh and a third place on his young resume. Florida watermelon grower JDI Farms will back Ross Saturday in the Kroger 200 at Martinsville Speedway.

When Chastain and the SS Green Light team finished an impressive seventh at Martinsville back in March taking advantage of several strong restarts over the last quarter of the Kroger 250 to earn his second career top-ten finish.

“I don’t know why but I guess we have been pretty good on restarts. I hope I can do that for a while on Saturday, or hopefully not. I’d rather just be out front with our JDI Farms Tundra, right?” Ross said with a chuckle.

“During the time off since Talladega, I went home to visit the family for a week and then I’ve spent the last couple weeks at the shop getting ready for these last few races,” Ross continued.

“Jeff (Agnew) and I went to Caraway and did some testing. I’m glad we went because we figured out some little things we wanted to change. Throughout the test we got both the trucks a lot better.”

The Kroger 200 is the 289th consecutive NCWTS start for the SS Green Light Racing team and the twenty-fourth career start for Chastain in the Truck Series. Ross is sixteenth in the NCWTS point standings and has three top-ten finishes in sixteen starts 2012 including a career best third at Bristol on August 22nd.

“We’re going to take the same Toyota back to Martinsville with a similar set-up to the spring race with just some minor changes. I think we should be OK, I’m excited to get back to short-track racing.”

“I’m not quite sure what our race strategy will be, but I know we won’t stop much. This race is only 200 laps so you want to stop as soon as you can make it to the finish because track position is so important at Martinsville.”

There are 42 trucks on the entry list for the Kroger 200, which will run prior to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Tums Fast Relief 500 at the Martinsville Speedway. Jeff Agnew will pilot the Mark 4 Suzuki No. 07 for SS Green Light Racing on Saturday.

SS Green Light Racing PR