AUSTIN, Texas — Ross Chastain bumped and banged his way around the final overtime lap at Circuit of the Americas on Sunday for his first career Cup Series win and upstart NASCAR team Trackhouse Racing’s first trip to Victory Lane.

Trackhouse is owned by former NASCAR driver Justin Marks and entertainer Pitbull and is in its second season of competition. Chastain, an eighth-generation watermelon farmer from Florida, was kept on by Marks he bought out Chip Ganassi’s entire NASCAR team ahead of this season.

Chastain celebrated by spiking a large watermelon off the top of his Chevrolet.

“It’s never tasted sweeter, I tell ya,” the 29-year-old said with a piece of rind stuck in his beard. He then took another huge bite.

The two-lap sprint produced the most aggressive action of a long Sunday of racing on the permanent road course used primarily for Formula One. The race had nine cautions and ran 3 hours, 20 minutes.

Chastain wasn’t even the leader – Tyler Reddick had somehow moved to the front in the previous single lap run between the eighth and ninth cautions – and Chastain also had to contend with former teammate and mentor AJ Allmendinger.

Chastain and Allmendinger restarted second and third, and sitting in fourth was Alex Bowman. He’s been chided for “backing into victories, and for a moment, it looked as if another would fall into his lap.

Chastain used an aggressive move to get past Reddick, and Allmendinger followed. Bowman also jumped past Reddick and closed the gap on Chastain and Allmendinger as the two friends jostled and bashed for the lead.

The overtime featured four lead changes – Chastain and Allmendinger swapped it twice, and Bowman even got to the front – but Chastain decided the race by divebombing inside of Allmendinger. That spun Allmendinger, winner of the Xfinity Series race on Saturday, into Bowman and Allmendinger went from second to 33rd.

“I was so worried about AJ on that second-to-last restart that I let Tyler drive right by both of us,” Chastain said. “AJ is so good, I’ve learned so much from him, and it’s like ‘How do you beat the guy? He taught me so much!’”

He wasn’t thrilled to have won the race with the dive-bomb on Allmendinger.

“I feel bad about AJ,” Chastain said. “I mean, he’s gonna be upset with me, but we raced hard and he owes me one.”

Allmendinger was openly annoyed after a mandatory trip to the care center.

“At the end of the day, we all have to look ourselves in the mirror. If you are OK with it, you’re OK with it. Each person is different,” he said of how Chastain raced him.

“I was doing everything I could do to try to sweep the weekend. We were that close. We know we had a shot to win the race.”

By the time Chastain made it to the postrace news conference, barreling through the doors with a watermelon in hand and a celebratory howl, he didn’t sound very concerned about Allmendinger.

“I did what I did,” Chastain said. “I stand by it.”

But then he waffled again, acknowledging he’s been overly aggressive in his difficult struggle to land a Cup ride with a top team. His family to this day runs one of the largest watermelon farms in the country.

“I’ve cost AJ a win at Daytona in the Xfinity Series, and he was obviously a quarter-mile away from winning here. He has taught me a lot, and I’m sure that our friendship will hurt for this,” Chastain said. “I feel like I had started to win some of his friendship back, and just being nice to each other when you see each other, it took a while.

“I hate that because I’ve lived through that in my career for 12th place in Xfinity. I’ve fought, and I’ve roughed people up and gotten into people. I’ve wrecked Justin Marks. It’s not lost on me that I make some of the same mistakes. It’s just staring down a Cup Series win. I just couldn’t let that go.”

Marks launched Trackhouse last season with one car for Daniel Suarez and sold Pitbull a piece of the ownership. Then the former driver, who turned 41 on Friday, stunned the motorsports industry with a shock June announcement that he’d bought Ganassi’s entire NASCAR organization.

Chastain drove for Ganassi at the time and wanted the second Trackhouse car.

“It was always Ross,” Marks said. “I told him when he got out of the car, it was always him.”

Ganassi congratulated Trackhouse and his former driver with his traditional “#ilikewinners” social media post.

Marks also kept crew chief Phil Surgen to add a turn-key complete second team. In fact, of the 128 Trackhouse employees, Marks estimated 105 came from Ganassi.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that a version of the two-decade old Ganassi organization, boosted by its spirited new owners and the equalizing Next Gen new model Cup car, has been good in all six races this season. Suarez led every lap of the first stage at COTA but his race was ruined when a tire failed on the second lap of the second stage.

The Mexican had to drive the final 25 laps with no power steering, too, then watch his new teammate become the first Trackhouse driver to Victory Lane.

“He is gutted,” Marks said. “He came over and gave Ross a hug. He understands the mission here.”

Bowman finished second for Hendrick Motorsports and a Chevrolet sweep. Christopher Bell was third for Toyota, followed by Chase Elliott of Hendrick, the defending race winner. Reddick was fifth and pole-sitter Ryan Blaney was the highest-finishing Ford driver in sixth.

BRISCOE’S BAD BREAKS

Chase Briscoe was a contender Sunday until his race fell apart over the final 12 laps.

He had a poor restart and found himself in unexpected traffic when he drove the Stewart-Haas Racing Ford off the course and cut the corner – which drew a NASCAR penalty.

A caution minutes later gave NASCAR a pause to review Briscoe’s off-road journey.

“As long as it’s called that way for everybody, I’m good with that,” said Tony Stewart, co-owner of Briscoe’s car and the guest analyst Sunday in the Fox Sports booth. The NASCAR Hall of Famer also noted that Briscoe lost several positions when he was pushed off track – the opposite of cutting the course to move up in the running order – and had fallen to eighth.

NASCAR ultimately agreed with Stewart’s assessment and rescinded the penalty.

But it didn’t get any better: Briscoe had to pit for new tires and dropped to 31st for the next restart. He wound up 30th.

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