CONCORD, N.C. — Any win in a crown-jewel race just means more. But Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 win for Ross Chastain and Trackhouse Racing highlighted the total team effort it took to propel their No. 1 Chevrolet toward NASCAR immortality.
At the team’s shop Wednesday, three days removed from their remarkable win six miles down the road at Charlotte Motor Speedway, smiles were still shining bright in awe of their weekend and all it entailed. The team churned through the wee hours of Saturday night into Sunday morning to prepare a backup car that was fit for Chastain to motor past William Byron in the late stages of Sunday’s marathon race to score his and the organization’s first victory in a NASCAR major.
MORE: Full race results | At-track photos
Mark Cass — the team’s setup mechanic, better known through the garage as “Mud” — has been working in NASCAR for 40 years. He got his start at age 12 painting parts and pieces utilized by Junior Johnson’s team and was working hand-in-hand with the Hall-of-Fame racer and team owner by age 18. He’s worked for Larry Hedrick Motorsports, Travis Carter Enterprises and Chip Ganassi Racing throughout his career, doing a little bit of everything over that time, including work as a jackman on pit road for 23 years.
A kid who grew up in North Wilkesboro — now a man who lives just east of the famous small town in Hamptonville — Cass had won the Daytona 500, Darlington’s Southern 500 and Indianapolis’ Brickyard 400. Prior to Sunday night, the Coca-Cola 600 — the race he grew up admiring as the World 600 called on the radio by Hall-of-Fame broadcaster Barney Hall — had always eluded him.
Until now. Team owner Justin Marks retained Cass as part of his operation when Marks purchased Ganassi’s program in 2021. Now in his fourth season under the Trackhouse banner, Cass can still draw parallels from the new age of stock-car racing back to his roots in the 1980s.
“This is one of the best places I’ve ever worked,” Cass told NASCAR.com. “Just the people and Justin. He makes you believe in what he says, you know? And that means a lot. He reminds me a lot of Junior. You knew where you stood with Junior, and I think Justin is sort of the same way.”
On the opposite end of the spectrum of experience stands Stan Vishinski, a 25-year-old tire technician and mechanic on the No. 1 roster. With origins in eastern Upstate New York, some two hours north of New York City, Vishinski knew by age 5 he wanted to work in NASCAR. This season is his first with Trackhouse and only his second overall, previously working as a rear-end mechanic at Carl Long’s MBM Motorsports in 2024.
Fast forward to last weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway, a 15-minute commute from shop to stadium in Concord, North Carolina. In Saturday’s practice, the setup Cass helped implement on the No. 1 car proved nearly perfect — Chastain rocketed to the top of the board in five-lap, 10-lap and 15-lap averages despite posting the ninth-quickest lap overall.
“I set Chastain’s car up, and I was at home,” Cass said. “We were actually getting ready. I like to cook on the grill, so we were going to have a little cookout for Memorial Day. I’ve been watching practice, and man, he’s fast.
“Well, I stepped outside for just a minute. When I came back in, we’ve crashed.”
A flat left-rear tire sent Chastain’s car into a slide in Turns 3 and 4. The car spun backward and swiped the outside SAFER barrier with the left side of the door before sliding back off the banking and onto the apron. Watching from pit road, Vishinski watched as crew chief Phil Surgen and car chief David Fero began to assess and plan the next steps.
“Quickly everybody sprung into action,” Vishinski said. “That’s the other part that’s so amazing with this group, is that the whole entire time, everybody’s absolute professional of, OK, how do we handle this situation? If they bring the car back here, get your jacks ready. Just make sure the car doesn’t drag the ground more than it needs to, right? Just having all that set up and getting a plan going before the car is even back.”
What ensued was organized chaos. Repairs on the primary car began immediately in the garage stall — not just with members of the No. 1 team but of all four of Trackhouse’s entries that weekend, including the Nos. 87, 88 and 99 cars.
“Even the shop guys that were there just being fans for the weekend, they were all there just trying to help out any way they could,” Vishinski said. “It was all hands on deck, and that was a super cool moment. Obviously, at a very negative time, to see that, it was pretty cool.”
But while they worked, the team opted for a backup car instead as the damage was deemed too much to repair. Garage hours ended at 4 p.m. ET, which meant work would need to continue at the shop.
“We had a goose-neck trailer and a dually sitting outside the garage waiting for us,” Vishinski said. “So we rolled that thing out, strapped that car down, took our toolbox with us, and quickly hightailed it back here, and it was all hands on deck. I walked in the door and it was just incredible to see. We had everybody, members from every team here, shop guys that came in when they found out what happened.”
That included Cass, who put his cookout on hold and hopped in his car to make the hour-long drive to Concord.
“The most amazing thing is what Justin tells you: As you walk in the shop, you see four different uniforms because we had four cars there,” Cass said. “Some guys are taking the motor out of the car we wrecked because it’s got to go into the one that we’re going to get together. The other guys are putting the suspension on. Then we tune the setup up. And it was just almost like a ballet — everybody’s moving.
“And the car was actually done way quicker than you thought it would, because that was our Nashville car backup. So you had to put the Charlotte setup under it, which required a lot of moving pivots and suspension parts.”
Quicker than expected? Maybe. But those efforts lasted long into the night.
As Surgen explained Sunday night, this car was going to be the team’s backup for Nashville one week later, so it had already been properly assembled. But when the team needed to transform it into a race-ready Coke 600 machine for a green flag just 27 hours away, it needed an overhaul of engine, suspension parts, paint-scheme vinyl wrap and a dynamometer (dyno) test in addition to scaling and inspecting it via the team’s Hawkeye laser system, making sure all was legal before it left the shop.
The final batch of an estimated 10 employees went home at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, and were the first ones back to the shop just three hours later.
Even in just one year, Vishinski had plenty of experience managing multiple roles at MBM Motorsports. In the thrash of getting the backup prepared, that experience came in handy, swapping transaxles, adding windshield glass and bleeding brakes in addition to other roles.
“That was my biggest thing, and it will continue to be, is just to try to be a sponge to everything,” Vishinski said. “Anything in the shop that I can get involved with, whether that’s tires, bodies, suspension stuff, transaxle stuff, motor stuff, I want to be able to know how to do it all in case you get into situations like that.”
That phrase — “be a sponge” — was a common thread through the No. 1 team all weekend. On a weekend meant to honor and remember fallen military service members, the name and photo of U.S. Army Specialist Kevin McCrea rode with Chastain all weekend. Plastered on the decklid were exactly those three words: Be a sponge. That was advice McCrea had given to his daughter, Allie, who was in attendance Sunday with her sister, brother and mother.
“That term or that saying can be taken any way we want,” Chastain said Sunday. “I can look at it, and I’m always trying to learn. That’s what he was telling them: ‘Just be a sponge.’ Just always try to learn something. Just like I don’t know how winning this race will affect my life, I don’t know how being a sponge will affect my life, but it’s something I’ll never forget.”
And indeed, the team’s efforts were not in vain. Chastain, Surgen and Co. worked to perfect the balance of their No. 1 car through the entire 600-mile affair, working from a last-place starting spot to eventually passing Byron to lead the final six laps en route to victory. The celebrations were electric — which would have been the case even had Chastain won in Saturday’s primary car. But that the entirety of Trackhouse had a hand in Sunday’s triumph added significant weight to a tremendous effort.
“That culture here is why you see that,” Vishinski said. “Everybody has each other’s back and we’re all in this together. And yeah, there might be three teams out there, but we are all one, trying to go out there and put the best product on track as possible. We all have that same goal in mind.”
Cass can now lay claim to winning all four of NASCAR’s crown-jewel races, a moment he dreamt of since childhood.
“Just getting your picture made with that trophy was pretty special because you always wanted to do that,” he said. “Yeah, it was a big win.”
Vishinski, meanwhile, celebrated his first NASCAR victory, period. The moment was even sweeter than he could have imagined.
“I can’t even explain to you what that felt like,” Vishinski said, “because since I was 5 years old, as long as I could remember, I always wondered what it would be like to be in Victory Lane of the NASCAR Cup Series. And at that moment, I’m like, this is happening. This is unbelievable. And for everything that not only the 1 team but just the whole company went through in the last 36 hours, like, you can’t make that stuff up.
“It is just amazing, you know. And to hug the guys and go onto pit road and celebrate — I called my mom right there, right as Ross started doing the burnout. I had to be like, ‘Gotta go, Mom!’ because you can’t hear anything. It was amazing. I mean, that’s something I will never forget for the rest of my life.”
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