After scoring an emotional win in Friday’s (May 10) NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Darlington Raceway, Ross Chastain had a surprisingly quiet Sunday (May 12) afternoon, as he scored an 11th-place finish in the Cup Series’ Goodyear 400.
Finishing 11th is nothing to write home about, especially when Chastain had one of the dominant cars in this race a year ago. But in this particular instance, an 11th-place finish allowed Chastain to become the latest driver to complete the All 40 Challenge.
What’s the All 40 Challenge, you may ask? It’s as simple as it sounds. A driver completes the All 40 Challenge when they record every finish between first and 40th at least once in their Cup career.
In his first 199 Cup starts, Chastain had finished in every possible position — except 11th. That changed on Sunday, and he became the newest member of the club.
Of course, there is no reward for completing the challenge — especially for the drivers that are only missing a finish in the back half of the field. But this is my column and I love stats, so let’s have some fun here.
The All 40 Challenge was originally created by NASCAR’s Steve Luvender, and Chastain became the first driver to complete the challenge since the 2023 Daytona 500, where Chris Buescher and Erik Jones both completed it by recording results of fourth and 37th, respectively.
When including anyone that has made at least one Cup start in the 2024 season, the All 40 club currently consists of 14 drivers: AJ Allmendinger, Ryan Blaney, Alex Bowman, Buescher, Kyle Busch, William Byron, Chastain, Denny Hamlin, Jimmie Johnson, Jones, Joey Logano, David Ragan, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Martin Truex Jr.
Now that Chastain has completed the challenge, who else is close to doing so?
Quite a few. Thirteen full-time drivers are only missing a handful of finishes, seven of which are missing just one pesky result.
| Driver | Finishes Needed |
| Michael McDowell | 2 |
| Kyle Larson | 22 |
| Daniel Suarez | 39 |
| Austin Dillon | 40 |
| Chase Elliott | 40 |
| Brad Keselowski | 40 |
| Bubba Wallace | 40 |
| Ryan Preece | 1, 2 |
| Justin Haley | 4, 10 |
| Corey LaJoie | 1, 2, 3 |
| Tyler Reddick | 17, 37, 40 |
| Christopher Bell | 25, 30, 37, 40 |
| Chase Briscoe | 2, 8, 38, 39, 40 |
The closest to completion? Kyle Larson. He only needs to finish 22nd, and he recently recorded back-to-back finishes of 21st at Texas Motor Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway earlier this year — close but no cigar.
He’ll never run outside the top 20 on pure pace, but as we’ve seen…
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