NASCAR driver stuns race fans with a move he made while playing Nintendo – National | Globalnews.ca learned

Take this as a lesson, kids – those hours spent playing video games can pay off tremendously in real life.

Such was the case with one quick-thinking NASCAR driver, Ross Chastain, who said he used an old trick he learned playing Nintendo GameCube as a kid to ensure his season continued.

The maneuver occurred on October 30 during the Xfinity 500 race at Martinsville Speedway in Ridgeway, Virginia.

On the final lap of the race, Chastain was in 10th place but needed to place in the top eight racers to earn enough points to qualify for the upcoming championship race on November 6th.

Racers are usually forced to slow down for the track’s infamous tight and flat uphill corners, but Chastain had a different plan in his pocket.

“I played a lot of NASCAR 2005 on the GameCube when[my brother]was growing up and you can get away with it and I never knew if it would actually work,” he told NBC Sports of his decision to put his car in fifth gear and full throttle so that his car drives along the outer wall.

The maneuver paid off and Chastain was able to overtake five cars and finish the race in fifth place.

The skillfully executed move amazed fans and spectators alike, and Chastain managed to set a record for the fastest lap of the track at 18.845 seconds.

Ars Technica has broken down the physics behind the tricky racing move, explaining that Chastain likely learned it while playing NASCAR 2005: Chasing the Cupwhich was released in 2004.

“Typically drivers brake when taking a tight corner on a circuit to counter forces that are pushing their cars to the outside of the track,” the website explained. “This braking effect slows them down dramatically in corners.

“This time, instead of slowing down for the corner, Chastain held his car in fifth gear, hugged the wall, let go of the wheel and let the wall hold his car in place—no brakes needed. He overtook five cars and set a 75-year lap record.”

The risks of the move were high: if he had driven something out of the wall or not positioned the car accurately, the consequences could have been disastrous.

However, it clearly paid off, leaving NASCAR fans and the other drivers on the track stunned.

One person claimed it could be “the greatest racing train in history.”

Another called Chastain a “real life Ricky Bobby,” in reference to the tenacious protagonist of the fictional 2006 racing comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad by Ricky Bobby.

Others confirmed that they had also tried something similar on their gaming consoles when they were kids.

Some drivers wondered if NASCAR would ban the maneuver for this weekend’s championship race in Phoenix, but NASCAR Vice President Steve O’Donnell said copycats are welcome to try the move if they dare.

“Certainly within the ruleswhat he did and was able to execute,” O’Donnell said Tuesday on SiriusXM 90.

“As with anything you see for the first time, you have to take a look. We’ve had a number of discussions internally about this move and all the what-ifs, but that’s within the rules and believe we’ll be there for Phoenix too and then something we can definitely evaluate in the off-season.

Whether the move will be banned in the coming seasons we probably won’t know for a while, but you can bet a lot of people will be watching this weekend’s championship race closely to see if anyone else is trying to pull it off.

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