"It’s cool to hear those stories”: Ross Chastain reminisces his "Hail Melon" move at Martinsville Speedway last season

One year on from the outrageous move touted as the "Hail Melon", Ross Chastain looks back at what was a once-in-a-generation kind of moment for fans of the sport. Say what you will about how the Trackhouse Racing driver qualified for the championship 4 last year, it did manage to rocket NASCAR into the global limelight.

The final Round of 8 race during the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series season saw the Florida native pull out a trick from his childhood Gamecube days and pin the throttle as well as the car around the 0.5-mile-long track's outside wall.

In a move that might be termed desperate or awesome depending on how you look at it, the motorsport world took notice of how a competitor's undying hunger for victory pushed him to do something unthinkable.

Looking back at his daredevil act as the sport visits Martinsville Speedway once again this weekend, Ross Chastain seems to enjoy the aftereffects of the move more than the act itself. Elaborating on how he has viewed the "Hail Melon" not just from inside his car, but from the fans' perspective, he told NBC Sports:

"Seeing the fans’ cell phone video from the grandstands from different angles, and then hearing the crowd, it was wild. You can hear people asking each other what happened. Seeing just those grainy, shaky videos was probably the coolest part. And then hearing my family, my friends and where they were. My Uncle Richie had walked out of the room when we took the white flag, because he thought we were done. And he came running back in when my cousins went to screaming. It’s cool to hear those stories.”

While NASCAR did ban the outrageous attempt at advancing to the next round of the playoffs, Ross Chastain certainly gave fans something to remember for the ages. After all, it's often witnessed in motorsport that an act or an advantage so big that it trumps the entire field often ends up getting outlawed anyway.

Denny Hamlin on what he thought of Ross Chastain's "Hail Melon" move at the time

Denny Hamlin was one driver who was directly on the receiving end of the move Ross Chastain pulled at Martinsville last year. Knocking the Joe Gibbs Racing driver out of contention for the playoffs, the #11 Toyota Camry TRD still tipped his hat to the move.

Hamlin said:

"I knew there was no way he was going to gain two spots in the last lap, and he found a way. I had to just applaud the move. Forward thinking by him for sure. It just came at my expense. Obviously, a novelty move that we’ll never see again, but hey, it just was another part of The Denny Hamlin Playoff Story.”

Can Ross Chastain pull off something similar this weekend at Martinsville? Probably not, but hey, there's no harm in dreaming big right?