Trackhouse Teammates Ross Chastain, Shane van Gisbergen Score Top 10s with Full Bowman Gray Experience

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — For most of the sport, the Cook Out Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium was a return to its roots, a flashback to the past of what NASCAR once was and how its drivers grew up racing.

For Trackhouse Racing teammates Ross Chastain and Shane van Gisbergen, the Madhouse experience was a first.

Neither driver had ever made a lap around the hallowed grounds of Bowman Gray before Saturday’s (Feb. 1) practice session, yet both wound up with top-10 finishes in Sunday’s (Feb. 2) main event.

Van Gisbergen was one of the biggest surprises of Bowman Gray’s return as the New Zealand native was strong all weekend long, backing up a third in his Saturday heat race with a ninth-place showing in the Clash. It was his first ever race on a 1/4-mile asphalt track.

Meanwhile, Chastain had to fight and claw in Sunday’s 200-lap feature after starting down in 17th. He kept the nose of his No. 1 car clean, and he climbed to sixth in the late stages of the race.

All the while, both got their first experience of the Madhouse crowd at Bowman Gray.

“Those driver intros were epic,” van Gisbergen told Frontstretch. “The atmosphere is pretty intimate with the crowd. Like there’s some interesting specimens in the crowd I’d say. But there’s some awesome people, everyone was really friendly. Yeah, what a cool place.”

It’s not just the crowd that gives the Madhouse its name, as the racing on track is equally notorious. The art of physicality in stock car racing is something van Gisbergen is still learning, but it’s an art he enjoys.

“Yeah, it’s still new to me,” van Gisbergen said. “Like even in the last corner, I bumped and runned the No. 17 (Chris Buescher), and I feel bad for stealing a spot off of him. But that’s normal, I guess. I don’t know, it’s pretty fun being able to hit people but not fun when you’re on the receiving end.”

Chastain got his fair share of the crowd on both Saturday and Sunday, and said the crowd certainly lived up to the Bowman Gray expectations.

“Oh yeah,” Chastain said of the crowd. “My best experience with it was the No. 8 (Kyle Busch) and the No. 7 (Justin Haley) in the heat race last night, and the No. 8 was pushing him around under caution. It was pretty fun to watch. I was right behind them, and I was looking at the stands. I watched it from the stands and now I’ve watched it on track, and they weren’t pointing it at me.”

The idea of using the Bowman Gray model to revive other short tracks across the country was floated throughout the weekend by many, but Chastain was quick to press pause on the idea. With the history of a track like Bowman Gray, Chastain feels like the Clash could have found a great home.

“I think we’ve got a pretty good one here at Bowman Gray,” Chastain said. “I think when you look at the history of it and what the France family has done here, this is where the very first race was ran. This is where Jim France came as a kid on his summer vacations with the family up here promoting races.

“Hearing that history and hearing Jim talk about when they were paying out the drivers at the end of the night, he was trying to go to sleep on the football benches in the fieldhouse over there. That’s the kind of stuff I want to hear and learn about because I’m new to the sport; my family wasn’t here and in it.

“To hear a legend like Jim France talk about how he remembers sleeping on the bench as his family was paying the racers, that’s the kind of cool stuff I think the Clash here at Bowman Gray is all about.”

NASCAR’s return to Bowman Gray was a successful one, and the reactions of the Trackhouse teammates is a testament to that claim: Two drivers from completely different walks of life are now teammates and experiencing short track racing in one of its purest forms for the first time together.