Ross Chastain looks back at the fabled Martinsville ‘Hail Melon,’ one year later

The week after Ross Chastain pulled his viral “Hail Melon” move at Martinsville Speedway to advance to NASCAR’s championship race last fall, he sat in a meeting with Cup Series officials and listened to his driver colleagues argue about whether the move should be banned.

Chastain sat in the back row, eating his lunch and saying nothing. A year later, the scene still makes him chuckle — even though NASCAR ultimately decided to outlaw the move beginning this season.

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“I will do anything imaginable in my head to lose less, and I stand by what I did last year,” Chastain told The Athletic this week. “But I don’t want to wreck on accident, let alone on purpose. So I’m good with not being allowed to do it.”

In the time since Chastain’s sensational, never-seen-anything-like-it move, some myths have crept in. He pre-planned it. He practiced it in the simulator. He knew it was going to work. Nope, nope and nope.

Even from the moments after the Hail Melon, Chastain — who comes from a family of watermelon farmers — never wavered from his story and insists it’s true: Driving into Turn 3, grabbing an extra gear and never taking his foot off the gas was a spur-of-the-moment, desperate decision that somehow worked. It gained him a fourth-place finish and enough points to eliminate rival Denny Hamlin, who had assumed he was safe in the final playoff spot heading into the last turn of the race.

ABSOLUTELY WILD!

BELL WINS! CHASTAIN WITH AN INCREDIBLE MOVE! #NASCARPlayoffs

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) October 30, 2022

Then Chastain pulled his miracle move — which will seemingly never happen again. In January, NASCAR deemed it unsafe and was worried every Martinsville race could see a finish like that if drivers felt forced into pulling a Chastain. If a driver attempts a similar wall ride in the future, NASCAR officials will issue a time penalty.

But the Hail Melon will live on in history as one of the best, most creative moves NASCAR has ever seen. Other drivers recently gushed to NBC about how they wished they’d had the guts to try it first.

Chastain just views it all as working to get the best result possible for himself and his team.

“Sometimes that work is on ‘SportsCenter,’ like the Hail Melon,” he said. “Most of the time, it is something that isn’t shown that I am doing off-camera to beat these guys on Sunday. Driving past them and into Victory Lane is the easiest way to lose less.”

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But that was a problem for much of this season. Despite several close calls, Chastain didn’t win until late June and said the time before he won again was “tough.”

“I didn’t want (the Hail Melon) to be the last thing we were known for,” he said. “I smiled when people brought it up, but as a competitor, I needed to win again to close the loop on that. And we did.”

Chastain won the Nashville Superspeedway race from the pole, leading a race-high 99 laps, and gave his Trackhouse Racing team a victory in its founding city. It was the shining moment in what has otherwise been a challenging season, at least compared to last year’s charming story; Trackhouse’s cars don’t quite have the same speed as in 2022, and Chastain had a stretch of nine races with just one top-10 finish after the Nashville win. He was eliminated in the second round of the playoffs.

He also became a lightning rod for criticism — again — after his early-season speed saw him running up front and leading the points, but also clashing with other top drivers. Chastain’s incident with Kyle Larson in the May race at Darlington drew a rebuke from Larson’s team owner Rick Hendrick (the two later had a phone conversation which Chastain found valuable).

But in the eyes of non-NASCAR fans, none of those things matter. Chastain is still the guy who did that thing. He’s not tired of the Hail Melon getting constantly brought up in public interactions, even if it “gets more attention than the wins combined.”

And his future is now secured. Not only does Chastain have a long-term contract with Trackhouse, but high-profile sponsor Anheuser-Busch will begin backing him next season after Kevin Harvick retires.

“I have more opportunities in front of me than I dreamed about just a few years ago and have surrounded myself with a team — at the track and away — to take advantage of them,” he said. “But it’s still Ross here answering your questions. For people that know me, (it’s) nothing new. If this is your introduction, hang on tight.”

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As the Hail Melon anniversary gets recognized at Martinsville this weekend, Chastain is also commemorating the moment: His helmet, designed by Ryan Young of Indocil Art, is painted with a scratched-up right side to match how Chastain’s No. 1 car appeared at the finish last year.

Protect your (hail) melon. 🍉@RossChastain | @MooseFraternity

— Trackhouse Racing (@TeamTrackhouse) October 26, 2023

“It turned out awesome and will be in my collection as a great memento to the Hail Melon forever,” Chastain said.

GO DEEPER

Ross Chastain: The Athletic's NASCAR Person of the Year

(Photo of Chastain’s car riding the wall around the final turn at Martinsville last October: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)