Like most drivers this weekend, Ross Chastain will commute a short distance from Mooresville to Charlotte for what should be a spectacular weekend of racing at Charlotte Motor Speedway, though a huge loss leading up to the 68th annual Coca-Cola 600 has cast a shadow over NASCAR’s longest race.
Like 19-year-old rookie teammate Connor Zilisch, Chastain is not doing The Double — the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 — but instead competing in all three national divisions at CMS for a total of 1,100 miles.
They will drive 200 in the Craftsman Truck Series on Friday, 300 in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series the following day and the bulky 600 on Sunday.
Chastain captured last year’s Cup race by starting from the field’s rear in a backup No. 1 car and recorded his only victory in 2025, extending his streak of race-winning seasons to four.
The 33-year-old Alva, Fla., native will try to become the first driver since Jimmie Johnson (2003, 2004, 2005) to win consecutive 600s.
Tragically, the major story entering the season’s 13th race will be the absence of 41-year-old Richard Childress Racing driver Kyle Busch, the 2018 Memorial Day weekend winner while driving for Joe Gibbs Racing, who was hospitalized Wednesday with a “severe illness,” according to his family, and passed away Thursday.
Sunday’s pre-race activities — a somber remembrance honoring fallen military heroes — will surely unfold with added thoughts of the sudden loss of the two-time Cup champion at the forefront, including his grieving family, wife Samantha and young children Brexton and Lennix.
When the garage opens Sunday, it will harken back to Rockingham in 2001, a week after NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt was killed in the Daytona 500.
With the racing community losing former driver Greg Biffle in a plane crash the week before Christmas and now Busch, the past six months have been a sucker punch to the soul.
The current pall will cloak every speedway’s garage and grandstand remaining on the schedule just like it did a quarter century ago with Earnhardt.
Busch’s teammate at JGR for 15 seasons, Denny Hamlin posted on Instagram that “we lost our Kobe Bryant” and said Friday that Busch’s impact was immeasurable.
“I just know that as a race fan, every race that he was in was more exciting to watch than the ones he wasn’t,” Hamlin said on ‘Good Morning America.’ “Simply put, he kept our fans entertained (and) kept the media members on their toes at all times.”
Busch’s career ends with 63 Cup wins, gridding ninth all-time, while Hamlin is right behind with 61.
Added the No. 11 driver: “As a competitor, there’s no way that I’d have the wins that I have, had I not had Kyle Busch as a teammate to push me to be better.”
In Busch’s place, Childress will turn to O’Reilly’s driver Austin Hill, who has won 15 times in the support series and made 17 career Cup starts.
RCR Chevys have won the 600 three times with Earnhardt (1986, 1992, 1993), twice with his replacement Kevin Harvick (2011, 2013) and with Austin Dillon (2017).
JGR also has a half-dozen wins including four of the past eight 600s via four drivers: Busch (2018), Martin Truex Jr. (2019), Hamlin (2022) and Christopher Bell (2024).
Bell’s win was the race’s second-shortest run ever, going just 249 circuits (373.5 miles) before his No. 20 Toyota was declared the winner over Brad Keselowski due to weather.
This will be a difficult weekend for the motorsports world, but the racing continues and the series soldiers on.
