William Byron, Ross Chastain should bury any potential beef for Talladega

If William Byron and Ross Chastain were smart, they shouldn't talk about their last-lap contact at Texas Motor Speedway in the next few days.

That's not to say they should let hard feelings linger for several weeks. They need to talk. Just not this week. They should agree to just bury it until after Talladega Superspeedway (Sunday, 3 p.m. ET on FOX) this weekend.

Chastain gave Byron's Hendrick Motorsports teammate Chase Elliott (once from behind and once from beside him) plenty of room on the two previous restarts to the final one at Texas, so he might feel he has already played the role of good Chevrolet teammate.

But working together at Talladega is too important for them to wonder if the other will help or hold a grudge over Texas, where Byron didn't give Chastain a break and turned him as he tried to block while battling for position.

While it looked like more a racing incident than anything, their best course of action would be to let any frustration resume next week at Dover.

The races at Talladega are ones where a driver needs as many friends as the driver can get — and often those friends come from within their manufacturer. 

Hendrick and Trackhouse (Chastain's team) have been the two strongest Chevrolet teams in Cup at the superspeedways. Richard Childress Racing, Kaulig and Spire certainly can help, too.

It would be no surprise to see Chastain and Byron needing to help each other at the front late in the race. A Byron-Chastain beef could be disruptive as they both have won in the last couple of years on superspeedway. 

As of Tuesday early afternoon, the two had not talked. Byron said after the race he didn't mean to turn Chastain but had a good run and felt he was in position not to be blocked. He has reached