Shawn Chastain
By all accounts, winning a track championship during a season is an amazing accomplishment, no matter what track or what class. But for a driver to win two track championships at two separate venues during the same season in the Super Late Model class is nothing short of astounding.
That’s exactly what Shawn Chastain did in 2015. The 42-year-old driver earned the Super Late Model track title at Ray Cook’s Tri-County Race Track in Brasstown, NC and then took those same honors at the Dixie Speedway in Woodstock, GA.
“It’s been real good compared to what some have had,” Chastain said regarding his success in the 2015 season during an interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “It was a lot of work, too much work. But it was nice to win though.”
To make Chastain’s feat seem even more impressive, the two tracks on which he raced throughout most of the season are not at all similar. Tri-County is a tight, high-banked quarter-mile facility while Dixie is a more moderately banked 3/8 mile oval. Tri-County typically contests its races on Friday nights with Saturday evening being the primary day of the week for Dixie.
“They’re like daylight and dark,” the Murphy, NC driver said of the two speedways. “Up here at Tri-County it’s wide open and you use all the motor you can get most of the time. Dixie is kind of slick and slowed down. You mostly run around the bottom there. They’re totally different, at least it seems that way to me.”
The rigors of the travel and preparation necessary for racing regularly on two separate tracks could be tiresome, especially on the morning after all of that competition.
“It’s just a few minutes drive from here to our shop but it’s an hour and a half to Woodstock,” Chastain explained. “We’d get back from Dixie on Saturday nights at about two o’clock. It makes the early service at church on Sunday real early.”
Chastain and his brother Johnny, who is also a racer, have their own business in the Murphy area. Running that takes up much of their time during weekdays before any attention can be focused on racing.
Shawn Chastain’s No. X15
“We’re not a high dollar race team,” the driver of the No. X15 declared. “Me and my brother have a tire shop and we’re working from eight to five there. If we get caught up, I’ll go back and work on my car a little bit then I work on it at night until we get it ready. It’s like having another job.”
In the end, racing has both its positives and negatives for Chastain.
“It’s not very rewarding money wise, but I guess you get the glory of it,” he said with a smile. “That part is pretty good, I guess. I just love to drive ’em. They’re fun to drive and I like to work on ’em too. All of it’s good except the worst thing about it is spending all your money.”
So does this double track champion plan on attempting the same type of schedule next season?
“I hope not. I wasn’t going to do it this year. I just went there(Dixie) to race and ended up running pretty good and was leading the points after a few weeks so I figured I might as well keep going.”
Chastain plans to compete in this weekend’s Southern Nationals Bonus Series sanctioned Gobbler at Cleveland Speedway.
