ORLANDO, Fla. — NASCAR driver Ross Chastain’s family watermelon farm in southwest Florida is never too far away for him.

The closer the better on race days. After all, whenever he takes the checkered flag, Chastain smashes a succulent watermelon in Victory Lane.

The ritual is a nod to his roots on the family’s 400-acre farm in Alva — a town of fewer than 3,000 east of Fort Myers — and an endorsement of agriculture’s footprint in Florida.

“Watermelons have put food on our table, money in our pocket and created our livelihood in the Chastain family for a long time,” he told the Orlando Sentinel.

The 32-year-old carries his experiences and life lessons from the soil to the race track.

Long, demanding days on the farm consumed school holidays and instilled a work ethic required many days in the garage.

“I spent a lot of my spring breaks sitting in a tractor listening to the local country radio station, just running equipment,” Chad Chastain recalled. ”That’s our busy season.”

The Chastain boys developed confidence and comfort behind the wheel of pickup trucks and tractors long before they had driver’s licenses. Being around complicated, critical and dangerous machinery honed mechanical skills essential to fix and fine tune race cars.

The family’s JDI Farms — “Just Do It,” a catchy sports apparel logo for most — was a way of life for the Chastains.

“It’s the mentality of farmers everywhere, but especially what our parents instilled in us,” Chad told the Sentinel. “If It’s 10 o’clock at night and you got to fix that broke down water pump, you have to be there to get it going. It doesn’t really matter what you have to do, you just have to get it done.

“That translates really well into racing.”

Amid Ross Chastain’s rise, watermelons have been inextricably tied to his success and identity.

The National Watermelon Association and National Watermelon Promotion Board sponsored his first full-time NASCAR ride in 2012 on the Truck Series. These days, Chastain uses his platform to promote agriculture’s importance.

In November, he traveled to Gainesville to cheer his Florida Gators’ upset against Ole Miss and make a cameo eating watermelon with “Fresh from Florida.”

“[I was] just showing people what is coming out of Florida that was grown here, watermelons being one of them,” he said.

Despite 12 wins in the sport’s three series, Chastain remains best known for executing the “Hail Melon” during the October 2022 Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway. Needing to make a late pass to the final four of the playoffs, he drove his No. 1 Chevrolet hard into the outside wall on turns 3 and 4 to pass Denny Hamlin at 130 mph on the confined, .526-mile oval.

The move and Chastain’s fifth-place finish knocked Hamlin out of the playoffs and set a NASCAR record for a lap on a track that has hosted events since 1948. Within days, the highlight video received more than 100 million social media views.

“The Hail Melon definitely changed my life,” Chastain said. “Although we have five Cup wins, I get more questions about the wall ride than I do all of them combined.”

Driving cars competitively arrived relatively recently for the Chastain clan, now in its eighth generation of watermelon farming — the past three in southwest Florida after an exodus from south Georgia.

A family hobby became a career option for Ross as he shined at 4-17 Southern Speedway in Punta Gorda and eventually accrued 50 short track victories.

The Chastain family was always along for the ride.

Papa Jim and Granddaddy, the maternal and paternal grandfathers, made sure Ross’s car — and later Chad’s — was safely buttoned down.

“My granddad would go around before every race and make sure the wheel bearings and nothing was loose, and the engine wasn’t leaking any oil, and everything was torqued correctly,” recalled Chad, who also has competed on NASCAR’s Trucks and Xfinity series.

The wives kept their grandsons hydrated and fed.

“Even aunts and uncles on both sides all enjoyed it, so it brought the whole family together,” Chad said. “That was really cool.”

Nothing, though, awed Chad like his big brother. From the time he began racing at 12, Ross Chastain was a force of nature out on the track.

“I thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread since the first race,” Chad, 26, said. “That was my hero growing up. I always thought, given the right opportunity he could do it, but as a little kid also never really understood what it took to get to NASCAR and get to race at the Cup level.”

Ross Chastain’s performance as an 18-year-old at New Smyrna Speedway in ’11 ignited his rise. Three wins in eight events during the World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing “opened all of our eyes as to what the future could hold,” Chad recalled.

During an impressive Truck Series debut in the summer of ’11, Chastain filled the seat vacated by Justin Marks and finished 10th. Eleven years later, Marks signed Chastain to drive for Trackhouse Racing as the new Gen-7 car arrived on the scene.

“It was just kind of right place, right time in my career, my age, and getting with my crew chief, Phil Surgen,” Chastain said. “He is crazy smart, and understands these race cars and makes them where I can drive them fast. A lot of things that came together, and now we are going into Year 4 working together.”

Chastain entered the week with the fresh memory of a close-call at the ’24 Daytona 500, where a bold move on the final lap paved the way for William Byron’s win.

“I made a move to go in the middle, and I wasn’t clear,” Chastain recalled. “I was hoping, and I wasn’t sure, and I hoped too much. I turned myself and spun out and that ended the race.”

A watermelon escaped the asphalt, but Chastain hopes this time at Daytona International Speedway is a smashing success.

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