SEASON IN REVIEW
Golden Valley, Minnesota driver Joe Frasson picked up his first LASTCAR Cup Series championship in 1976, scoring four last-place finishes in nine starts during a thirty race season. It was the fewest starts by a LASTCAR champion since Joe Staton’s seven starts in 1952. It was also the first time since 1965 that the LASTCAR title did not come down to a tiebreaker.
The mercurial Frasson was competing in his eighth season on the NASCAR Cup Series tour. Prior to that year, Frasson was winless, but had scored four Top Fives and eighteen Top Tens, including a career-best 3rd at Darlington, South Carolina on April 16, 1972 and College Station, Texas on June 10, 1973. All but three of Frasson’s 107 Cup Series starts came while driving in his own equipment, many of them in a #18 Dodge.
By 1976, Frasson switched to Chevrolet with sponsorship from Excuse Lounge, a bar he purchased in Spartanburg, Sout Carolina. All four of his last-place finishes came in a seven-race stretch, starting with his fourth start of the year in Brooklyn, Michigan on June 20, where he lost the engine after the opening lap. After missing the next race, the Firecracker 400 at Daytona on July 4, Frasson finished last in two consecutive races, first in Nashville, Tennessee on July 17, where another engine failure came after just one lap. The Purolator 500 at Long Pond, Pennsylvania came next, where Frasson was involved in a two-car accident with Bill Hollar after two laps, dropping him to 40th. The fourth finish came three races after that in Bristol, Tennessee on August 29, where the Frasson team apparently ran out of tires after just five laps.
Frasson scored his nineteenth and final top-ten finish in the 1976 season, pulling off an 8th-place run on April 11 in the Rebel 500 in Darlington, South Carolina. He competed in just six more races after 1976, retiring after his 107th career start in Rockingham, North Carolina on October 22, 1978. Frasson passed away on November 21, 2016.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
A full 199 laps before David Pearson and Richard Petty collided battling for the lead in the Daytona 500 on February 15, Cale Yarborough finished last when his #11 Holly Farms Chevrolet lost the engine, leaving him 42nd. It was the 12th last-place finish of his career. Despite the early exit, Yarborough bounced back to win nine races and the first of three consecutive NASCAR Cup Series Championships.
Rookie driver Bill Elliott finished last in his second career start at in the Atlanta 500 at his home track, the Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Georgia. Twenty-one laps into the March 21 race, the driveshaft broke on his #9 Dahlongea Ford Sales Ford. Starting in 1983, Elliott would go on to win forty-four races, including five at the Atlanta track.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) Joe Frasson (4)
2nd) Darrell Bryant, Henley Gray, Bruce Hill (3)
3rd) Buddy Arrington, Richard D. Brown, Jack Donohue, Bill Elliott, Ron Esau, Tommy Gale, Jeff Handy, Al Holbert, Harry Jefferson, Larry LaMay, Skip Manning, Ed Negre, Rick Newsom, Terry Ryan, Tighe Scott, Darrell Waltrip, Cale Yarborough (1)
