Ever since 2014, four drivers each year have been pitted in a match race at the end of the season to decide who truly deserves the right to be crowned the NASCAR Cup Series champion. The Championship 4 has been around long enough that along the way, it’s developed a recurring cast of characters who are expected to continue and perhaps even enhance their stories of championship chases and conquests — but this year, the cast has been shaken up considerably.
There’s the most popular driver in NASCAR in Chase Elliott, back in the Championship 4 for the third time after being the dominant driver of the 2022 season. And there’s also Joey Logano, who’s been in the Championship 4 bi-annually ever since 2014. But then there’s two emerging stars who few could have imagined would reach this point: Ross Chastain, whose breakout season reached a climax last week that has instantly made him one of the most notorious and celebrated racers on the planet, and Christopher Bell, who has transformed from a still-budding young star into as clutch a driver the playoff format has ever seen.
All four enter this weekend’s season finale and championship race at Phoenix with a story to tell, and all four shared that story during Thursday’s Championship 4 Media Day. Here is a look at one major storyline to emerge from media day for each of the Championship 4 drivers.
Hail Melon, Full of Grace
It has been a very, very long time since a move made in a NASCAR race commanded the widespread attention and notoriety that is now being bestowed upon Ross Chastain. By running flat out against the wall and gaining five spots in one corner to make the Championship 4, Chastain went from a breakout star in NASCAR to a star heralded across the globe.
Millions upon millions watched the highlight of Chastain’s move — now dubbed the “Hail Melon” by NASCAR president Steve Phelps — which was a viral sensation and ended up at No. 1 on SportsCenter’s Top 10. Formula 1 stars hailed Chastain on social media, with two-time world champion Fernando Alonso calling Chastain’s move “the best thing of 2022 in motor racing.” Hard Drive, a satirical video game publication, wrote a piece centered around the fact that Chastain’s move originated while playing NASCAR 2005 with his brother on the Nintendo GameCube.
It’s an unusual position for Chastain, who not long ago was an unheralded underdog that just began to gain notoriety for overachieving in lesser equipment and for being a watermelon farmer by trade. And in the leadup to the biggest race of his entire career, Chastain did confess that he has taken some time to sample everything that’s come his way.
“For better or worse, you’ve got to turn it off. You have to turn it off at some point. That got turned off,” Chastain said. “But you can’t open social media without seeing it. It’s like, ‘Dang it, I just want to see what these guys are saying today’, and I still see my stuff popping up, so… We’re just living in the moment, though.”
COVID Champion No More?
No one can take away the fact that Chase Elliott won the 2020 Cup Series championship, but his first championship season is and always will be defined by the circumstances it took place under. Elliott emerged as the champion from a severely altered season that saw a two-month lockdown, a highly-condensed schedule made up on the fly, and little to no fans in the grandstands throughout the year.
Now, with widespread panic over COVID and the restrictions of the pandemic a thing of the past, Elliott has a chance at not only another championship, but one that comes under normal circumstances — even if Elliott himself doesn’t think that way.
“At the end of the day, does it really matter? No. To me, not really,” Elliott said. “Was it unfortunate circumstances? Absolutely. No one wanted to be in that situation as we went through those times in 2020 and beyond. But I felt like we made the most out of a tough situation that the globe was in at that point in time, and we were able to get back and get on track. I’m super proud of NASCAR for the efforts that we had going on that year.
“I don’t think it’s all negative from that standpoint. Certainly for us, it was a great year for us. You don’t want to let those things bring that down. It’s still a great accomplishment. I truthfully think it’s just as meaningful in 2020 as it has been this week leading in.”
Momma’s Bell
What enhanced Christopher Bell’s second walk-off win of the playoffs at Martinsville was the unusual outburst of emotion that Bell showed after taking the checkered flag to make the Championship 4. Bell, whose temperament is often very even, hooted and hollered and got noticeably choked up while dedicating the victory to his mother and father.
Bell’s parents, who still live in Oklahoma while he pursues his racing career, played an integral part in Bell’s journey to the Championship 4 despite the enormous adversity he faced. Speaking to reporters, Bell revealed that it was his parents who believed he could make it to this point in the playoffs even after a crash at Las Vegas put Bell in a deep points hole he could not climb out of by the end of the day at Homestead.
“The emotions stemmed from the fact that they believed in me after Vegas. They believed in me after Homestead when I didn’t believe in myself. I thought it was over,” Bell said. “They kept telling me, ‘You’re going to do it, you’re going to do it.’ That’s when it stemmed from when I said, We did it.
“They believed in me to make it when I didn’t think it was going to happen. By golly, we did it.”
Bell’s parents will both be at this weekend’s championship race in Phoenix, where Bell will have an enormous asset in his corner: While this will be Bell’s first-ever shot at the Cup championship, his crew chief Adam Stevens has two Cup titles under his belt with Kyle Busch in 2015 and 2019.
Two Times for Driver 22
Chase Elliott isn’t the only Championship 4 driver who stands to become a multi-time Cup champion. Joey Logano is in position to win his second Cup title after originally prevailing as an underdog in 2018.
Of all the drivers in the title fight, Logano is the closest to having built a complete Hall of Fame resume. He has 30 career victories in 14 full seasons, and he’s made the Championship 4 a total of five times since the current playoff format was introduced in 2014. A second championship to go with his 2018 triumph would only enhance the case Logano is building for himself as one of the greats.
When asked if a second championship would validate his racing career, Logano shared that he hadn’t focused on the idea of his legacy in trying to prevail this Sunday.
“I mean, two is twice as good,” Logano laughed. “I don’t know. I mean, one definitely is nice. It’s nice to say you have more than none. I don’t know. I’ve never thought of it that deeply if I’m being honest with you. I might be living right at the hood pins at this moment when it comes to looking at legacies, what those things mean and all that.
“I’m in the race still, right? I’m still going. I can’t say I can look back at that and say that I’m not solidified as a Cup driver, Hall of Famer, with one championship. I don’t think that’s right to say either. There’s so much more that goes behind it.”
If there is anything that illustrates the point Logano has reached in his career, it’s the fact that the 32-year-old is the oldest driver in the Championship 4 — something that highlights his long journey from a teenage driving prodigy who was thrust into the Cup Series full-time at just 18 years old in 2009.
“It’s interesting ’cause, like, I’m not that much older than Ross,” Logano said. “Ross is only a year younger than me.”