In this NASCAR Inside the Playoffs clip, Carl Edwards and Ross Chastain discuss when on-track rivalries are born.
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00:00So, I know incidents like this, I mean, you mentioned, and switching gears now back to
00:05Alex Bowman kind of conversations, but rivalries do kind of start from somewhere, right?
00:12So how does this moment and what you mentioned, like some of this stuff from before, how does
00:15this kind of set a base for some of that?
00:18Not necessarily saying this in general, but incidents like this.
00:21Well, I think it's one brick, but there's a long way to go.
00:26Alex has a lot of runway before anybody would really think he's out just driving erratically.
00:32That's just not the kind of guy he is.
00:34You meet his dad and that's just very, very quiet.
00:36And Alex is a little bit louder than Mr. Bowman, but that's a very low bar because that's just
00:44how he was raised.
00:45So I think, you know, if they go to the roval and the 12 spins off the 48 bumper, now we
00:48have an issue, but he's got some room.
00:51Right.
00:52And the guy who maybe didn't keep it under control all the time, they can get way out
00:56of hand.
00:57And you know, you know how this goes.
00:58We've all seen it.
00:59I've been a part of it.
01:00And I think that the, that I don't see anything right now that looks like total chaos.
01:05This is what you're talking about, Carl?
01:06Yeah.
01:07Yeah.
01:08I don't know if this was, this was part of all of it.
01:10Um, yeah.
01:11I was along for the ride there, but then I went ahead later on, had to finish the race
01:16had to, and I made some real conscious decisions.
01:19This was one of the worst ones, worst decisions I've ever made in my career was to pull back
01:23in the garage, go back out and think, oh, I'm going to wreck them.
01:27When I looked in my mirror and saw this, it was one of the most terrifying things I've
01:31ever seen, but I didn't learn my lesson because then I went ahead and did this.
01:36And it's just, you can't, as a driver, I can only speak for me when this started to affect
01:41my performance.
01:42It's bad.
01:43Because you were thinking about that more than you were thinking about finishing.
01:45Yes, you can't do that.
01:46And I let myself do that a couple of times in my career and it was no good.
01:50You've got to be able to separate.
01:51Some guys are really good at that.
01:52Some guys like myself.
01:53It took a while.
01:54That was Brad Kozlowski with Carl back in the day.
01:56They had a notorious rivalry.
01:58And I think, I think talking about Bowman, if Bowman had gotten into that with like,
02:02say Bubba Wallace, because Bubba and him got into it at Chicago and that really messed
02:07up his race, then that might be lead to something else.
02:10But when it's with different guys, I think it takes longer to build those kinds of animosities.
02:16And that push might not have gone bad.
02:18Everything could have worked.
02:19But it wasn't egregious.
02:20It wasn't just way out of line from the outside.
02:22Carl, you said something interesting, like you were thinking about the rivalry more than
02:25anything.
02:26Like, you recently kind of experienced this whole thing.
02:29When you're inside those cars and you're around Denny Hamlin, because that was sort of one
02:32that we followed a lot.
02:34Do you think about that?
02:35Like, I got to cross my T's and dot my I's or however we describe it.
02:40Um, well.
02:41Does it change the way that you race in the car?
02:44Like Carl, I haven't learned my lesson.
02:46My rivalries started like early on at a young age when like racers would, other drivers
02:51come up to me and realize like, oh, they, they couldn't confront me after the race because
02:55I was 15 years old and they're 30, you know?
02:58And so once I turned 18, I was like, oh boy, now, now they're not going to stop when they
03:02get to me.
03:03Um, so I've had that along the way.
03:05Um, but yeah, with like my stuff with, with Denny, um, you know, at first it was intentional
03:11to move him here.
03:12That was an intentional move.
03:13I didn't know he was going to go up and crash.
03:14We were early in the gen seven car and I think he overcorrected, but I hit him way
03:18too hard.
03:19And then Atlanta was just a, a moment where right here, okay, well, where I just decided
03:24not to lift when I was tight, my car was already torn up.
03:27Um, and then he took it back out on me here at Pocono and, and took this win from us.
03:31Um, but I felt like that was fair.
03:33I felt like, uh, that I deserve that.
03:35And I learned from that.
03:36Um, and we did, we, we got to a point where we raced really well.
03:39Joey Logano and I in 2021 had a off the camera.
03:43We weren't, each of us weren't running really fast that year.
03:45We were in like 13th place racing each other, terrible at like Kansas and Michigan, a few
03:51places.
03:52And we had a long talk on pit road after that.
03:54We've been great.
03:55We're super aggressive.
03:56I haven't touched each other since.
03:57Need it for the sport though.
03:58That is great.
03:59And you know, the best way to get back at arrival, what's that beat them, beat them.
04:02That's right.
04:03Dad told me that from the time I was 12 years old, I'm like 12 years old.
04:07I want to go fight.
04:08And he's like, no, we're just going to go beat them.
04:10So how, um, you know what?
04:11Let's remind everybody how, how you did beat Denny Hamlin, uh, at, at your own game, your
04:16own game, the hail melon, everybody.
04:23One more shot for playoff drivers at Martinsville speedway.
04:26I got to get up.
04:27Yeah, I got to get up.
04:28The car gets the wall wide open.
04:29Chastain did a video game.
04:30Holy hell.
04:31I guess it does work.
04:32it wide open all the way through the corner.
04:57I cannot believe it.
04:58The one hillbury defense and uh, got it.
04:59I thought, why not?
05:00We live by why not?
05:01Okay.
05:02Like I saw this somebody's like did you see what happened? I'm like what are you talking about?
05:06I saw it and I was simultaneously like blown away number one second so jealous that I didn't do that
05:12It was the cook if you like sports if you like
05:17People just going for it. That is it
05:19I'm like who is this dude who is Ross Chastain and then the why not it like it made my whole
05:25I had a great week where I was thinking why not that's what Ross says why not I mean tell me about that
05:30Yeah, so the the why not pieces is actually starts out with a sad story of coming out of high school
05:35My two of my best friends Cody Moran and Shane Lester in a car crash got it Cody got ejected broke his neck
05:41He'll never walk again probably so out of that in the hospital
05:45they came up with a merchandise brand a lifestyle brand if you will and
05:49had like a sleeve of like 12 hats made like 12 Richardson 112 like the trucker hats we all wore and
05:55Started selling them and because they like Cody's life changed that night Shane walked away from the car crash totally fine
06:01Cody will never walk again
06:03And so they lived and we lived through high school and in the ever since with the motto of like hey you want to go
06:09On the boat why not hey you want to drink a beer?
06:11Why not and so we we they've grown that brand and I've watched from afar, and it's a lifestyle
06:18It's a it's a mentality that I have and you know their hats and shirts on on their brand really
06:23You know let me wear it on my head what I'm feeling inside, so do you have one of these I want
06:29You just said it
06:30I mean we are all blessed with this amazing thing that is life in this world and to say why not and go live it
06:35Is beautiful man?
06:36Did you think in that car as you were getting ready to make that move was that what went through Ross Chastain's mind?
06:42Why not let's just do this so when I do think through things whether it's
06:45You know
06:50You know when it's slow in business or something
06:52But in those high-paced moments where it's right now
06:55It was like 11 or 12 seconds from the moment
06:57I thought of it coming up turn four we took the white to when I did it into turn three
07:01I kept saying why not and I didn't have a single reason which actually scares me more
07:05That's what's scary is I couldn't think of what I mean. I thought about the gate off turn four. It's safe
07:09I thought about the catch fence if I hit it. It's safe
07:12I thought line it up with the wall. Do not turn in and cut my angle and
07:17The pull was a total accident. That was just the racer
07:20I mean know when I was about to hit the chip, and I pulled fifth