Sometimes the best way forward is acceptance. It is no secret that Ross Chastain and Joey Logano have locked horns before; take last year’s race in Chicago as an example. But when the two tangled again last weekend in Phoenix, the reaction felt different. After the race, Chastain kept a cool head and admitted he isn’t ready to pin the blame on Logano just yet.

“We’re so alike, we don’t get along well on track, so we have a… just an understanding,” he said. “We’ve figured out that if we don’t do this in a working way, it’s going to be brutal for both of us, and we’ve had some crazy blocks thrown on each other throughout the years, and racing for 15th. It didn’t matter that we’ve got a lot better working relationship now, and yeah, it was nice.”

Despite the late race contact at the NASCAR Cup Series race at Phoenix last Sunday, Ross Chastain isn’t holding a grudge against Joey Logano. The 33-year-old driver explained that the incident appeared to be more of a racing miscalculation than anything intentional.

The trouble unfolded on lap 217 restart when the field charged back toward Turn 1 and the two drivers converged at a tricky transition on the track. The contact sent Chastain around and triggered a wreck that also swept up Anthony Alfredo and Austin Cindric, adding more frustration to what was already a chaotic moment in the race.

Although Chastain managed to keep his car running, the damage and time lost in the aftermath proved costly. By the time the checkered flag waved, he had fallen 25 laps behind the race leader.

Logano initially continued after the incident but unraveled later when he was caught in another crash on lap 254 that left the No. 22 car heavily damaged, but he first refused to take up any ownership of the wreck.

In the moments after the first wreck, Logano quickly accepted responsibility, first over his team radio and later in a phone call to Chastain to offer an apology, a gesture that seemed to settle any lingering tension between the two.

The early part of the season has also seen the drivers sitting in very different spots in the standings. Chastain finds himself 23rd with 74 points, while Joey Logano, a three-time NASCAR Cup champion, holds seventh place with 113 points as the championship picture begins to take shape.

While this stirrup, where Chastain was caught up in a mess, may be the first of its kind, he is usually the one drawing fire for his aggressive racing.

Back in 2023, with the leaders all jockeying for position during the final laps of the Toyota Owners 400 in Richmond, Bell in the No. 20 Toyota Camry tried to move up and out of the middle lane just as Chastain in the No. 1 Chevrolet Camaro made a move to power forward into the bottom lane of the track. The maneuver caused Bell’s car to make contact with the rear of the No. 24 Chevrolet Camaro, piloted by William Byron, spinning him around to bring out the caution.

“The bonsai came in and put us three wide,” Bell said post-race. “The wrecking ball [Chastain] came in and made us three wide at the last second, and there wasn’t enough room to be three wide.”

Chastain is one driver in the Cup Series who regularly finds himself in hot water with other drivers, including Denny Hamlin, who NASCAR slammed with a $50,000 fine and 25 driver points for publicly admitting on his Actions Detrimental podcast that his retaliatory fencing of Chastain in Phoenix was intentional.

Moving on, as the dust settles on Phoenix Raceway, Chastain is completely unbothered by something else as well.

Ross Chastain offers an unbothered stance on the Chase format

Early in the revamped championship structure of the NASCAR Cup Series, Ross Chastain summed up his thoughts in just three blunt words:

“I don’t care.”

For the Florida native, the debate around formats and point systems simply isn’t something that keeps him up at night. As long as he can strap into the No.1 Chevrolet for Trackhouse Racing and chase speed every weekend, the method used to crown the champion doesn’t make much of a difference to him.

The series introduced a significant change in 2026, moving away from the four-round elimination playoff system that had long defined the modern era. In its place, NASCAR rolled out a modified version of the Chase for the Cup, a 10-race points-based championship reminiscent of the format used between 2004 and 2013 to determine the season’s champion.

And Chastain’s stance on this is straightforward. The format may evolve, the points may change, and the championship math might look different, but for him, the focus remains exactly where it has always been.

“That’s the short answer because whatever they do, I’ll go race. Sign me up for whatever the France family and NASCAR want. If they want to flip everything upside down, it doesn’t matter to me. I just need the rulebook. Just give me the schedule, the rules for the cars, and the on-track procedures, and I’ll go race,” he added.

And now, as the NASCAR Cup Series gears up for the Pennzoil 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Logano and Chastain have buried the hatchet and cannot wait to get back to racing.