Chastained/Chastained by Proxy
Nothing hurts a fan’s heart more than having their driver eliminated because of something another driver did. Getting caught up in a wreck is one thing, but when your favorite driver gets put in the wall because another driver was unnecessarily aggressive, it can be too much for fans to handle. In the 2022 season, a new phrase was coined to describe just such an event: Chastained.
Kyle Busch is credited with the creation of this phrase. During the Richmond race in August, Kyle Busch, Ross Chastain, and Erik Jones were racing down into turn 3 and went sort of 3-wide with Busch on the outside and Chastain in the middle. Chastain came up into Busch’s left rear quarter panel and spun Busch around. During post-incident interviews, Busch explained what happened on the track: “We got Chastained.” Within a few hours, Urban Dictionary had new entries for “Chastained” as a verb meaning “the act of getting run over, used up, doored, walled, or moved intentionally in a NASCAR event by a fellow competitor.”
But is being Chastained something that happens often enough to warrant a new word creation or does it just seem like it happens that often? In the 2022 season (through Kansas), Chastain has been directly involved in 14 incidents that led to cautions. By comparison, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (often referred to as “Wrecky Spinhouse” – another Rowdy-given nickname) has only been directly involved in 11 incidents that led to cautions.
After a couple of incidents at World Wide Technology Raceway in June, Chastain admitted to his terrible driving and how each poor decision he made on track led to another competitor suffering damage. Apologies for poor driving skills don’t put broken toe links back to rights, though. And recognizing his poor driving that day was obviously not enough to deter him from doing it again. A month later, Chastain once again provided after-race comments referencing his aggressive driving on the track, saying “I hated that I took the best car here and I tore it up a couple times.”
But did he hate it enough to not drive so aggressively? The stats say no. Chastain was involved in incidents leading to cautions at the next race. And the one after that. And the one after that. Of course, these last few incidents were directly related to the Hamlin/Chastain feud, so there is the chance that Chastain was actually Chastained by Proxy, which is getting wrecked because you are Ross Chastain or because you are near him when someone else seeks revenge. It would be a safe assumption that the latter half of the season would see the incidences of Chastained by Proxy increase as more drivers become frustrated with being Chastained and they seek revenge on the track. Will drivers set aside the Chastained tallies for the sake of the playoffs? Or will the playoffs become even crazier as Chastained/Chastained by Proxy leads to wrecks and revenge-spins that shake up the standings in ways we are not able to imagine?
Featured image source: racingnews.co
