NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. called out Ross Chastain for how he conducted himself at COTA and how affected Chase Elliott’s race.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was not a fan of Ross Chastain’s actions during COTA, calling to mind the Trackhouse Racing star’s move on Chase Elliott.
Very early in the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix, Chastain was driving behind Elliott. As the two cars went into Turn 1, Chastain spun out the Hendrick Motorsports star, leading to Elliott slamming into the wall. Connor Zilisch, Todd Gilliland, and Denny Hamlin were also involved in the incident.
Though the race started rough for Elliott, he was able to recover nicely, finishing in fourth while Chastain finished in 12th. After the dust settled, Earnhardt shared his thoughts on the incident, believing that what the 32-year-old did against Elliott was unwarranted.
“And so it wasn’t like Ross looked up in the mirror and went, ‘Oh —-, I’m pulling over,'” Earnhardt began on a recent episode of ‘Dirty Air.’ “Like he was probably thinking he had laps of warnings and comments to think, what am I going to do? What are my options? And Ross says, coming out of turn one, ‘You know what? I’m going to let him go. To hell with optics.’
“‘I don’t care what it looks like, but I’d rather finish ninth, 10th, or wherever I’m going to back up to, then get turned around and be backwards and finish 28th or 30th or whatever last place was on the lead lap.’ So Ross chose the better finishing position, 12th.
“It looks a little chicken—-. And he didn’t care what the optics looked like. He didn’t care if it looked like he was being a wuss about it. And then after the race, I guess he didn’t have a comment.”
Earnhardt then added that he believes Chastain will attempt to patch things up with Elliott in the coming weeks in hopes that he will not be a victim to any retaliatory moves on the track. “Ross is hoping that he can diffuse it … before he has to pay a price on the racetrack, like Chase had to pay,” he continued.
“You could say, ‘Well Chase got back to the top five but he might have had a chance to win that race or race for the win had he not gotten spun out on that first corner.'” The former NASCAR star was in the same line of thinking as Elliott, as after the race, he expressed his regret for not having a clean race. 
“I just wish we could put together a clean day,” Elliott said to reporters after the race. “It just sucks to fall behind that early. I thought we had a great NAPA Chevy yesterday, and I would have just liked to have seen how we would have stacked up to those guys today. That’s all.
