Ross Chastain said on Saturday morning at Phoenix Raceway that he didn’t comment after the NASCAR Cup Series race on Sunday at Circuit of the Americas about his first lap collision with Chase Elliott because he hadn’t seen a replay and didn’t fully have a picture.
He said it was ‘an error’ to go inside of Kyle Larson who himself went inside of Daniel Suarez into Turn 1.
“I wish I hadn’t done it and told Chase that and cleared the air,” Chastain said during his weekly media scrum.
Chastain said, ‘incorrectly,’ that he thought the speed of his Trackhouse Racing No. 1 was slow enough to make the corner.
“I thought I had plenty of ability to brake,” Chastain said. “I thought I was good initially but then I started locking up. Too fast. I should have just stayed behind (Larson).”
Chastain said he respected the questions asked of him by the media last week but declined because he ‘knows better’ than to comment before he had seen it and digested what happened.
“I watched the replay and I’m the outlier,” Chastain said. “I’m the furthest left and the fastest. It was an error. When I jumped inside (Larson) I thought I was slow enough to make the corner and that was not the case. I get it and I get to live with that. From the outside, it doesn’t look good, but it was just an error. A big error.”
Elliott went on to finish fourth with his damaged car but otherwise didn’t have anything to say about their conversation.
“There’s not a lot for me to comment on,” Elliott said. “I hate it happened. It’s easy for me to say I wish it hadn’t happened on the first lap which is true but if it happens at any point of the race, you’re going to be bummed out.
“Like I said, I was proud of our recovery but I hate that we had to recover. Our car never drove like it did on Saturday, which is frustrating, but outside of that, I don’t have anything to comment about it.”
