SEASON IN REVIEW
Villa Park, Illinois driver John Kennedy (no relation to the late U.S. President) scored his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 1978, scoring three last-place finishes in his four starts during the thirty-race season, thus beating Earle Canavan’s 1977 record for fewest races started by a LASTCAR champion.
An owner-driver, Kennedy was competing in just his second season since an eight-race stint driving #29 Dodges and Chevrolets in 1969. It was during that season Kennedy scored a career-best 14th at Hampton, Georgia on August 10, 1969. Following his first career last-place finish at Rockingham, North Carolina on October 26, 1969, Kennedy did not start another Cup race until June 19, 1977, when he came home 33rd after an engine failure in the Cam 2 Motor Oil 400 at Brooklyn, Michigan. Kennedy switched from Chevrolet to Ford for the Michigan race and ran the #0 which he’d run for the remainder of his NASCAR career.
Kennedy’s next career start came in his first of 1978, the April 16 running of the Gwyn Staley Memorial in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. It was there that Kennedy scored his first of three last-place finishes that season, his #0 Avanti CB Ford breaking the rear end after 34 laps. The next finish came in the fall race at North Wilkesboro on October 1, where another rear end failure knocked out his Spohn’s Body Shop-sponsored Ford after 112 laps. This made Kennedy the second driver to sweep both last-place finishes at North Wilkesboro, joining G.C. Spencer in 1970.
Kennedy’s third finish came three races later in Hampton, Georgia on November 5, where his Spohn’s machine was unable to start the race.
The next season, Kennedy switched to Chevrolet and completed the final five races of his 18-race career at North Wilkesboro on October 14, 1979, coming home 23rd in the 29-car field. He passed away on November 23, 2015.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
A 38-year-old Harry Gant, making the ninth start of a 474-race career, scored his first last-place finish in his first Daytona 500 start on February 19. Gant’s #66 C.C.C. Buick out of the Ray Emerson stables lost the engine after the opening lap. Gant would go on to win eighteen races over twenty-two seasons, including a streak of four in a row in September 1991, and became NASCAR’s oldest Cup race winner at Brooklyn, Michigan on August 16, 1992.
Neil Bonnett, a member of the growing “Alabama Gang” that included the Allison family, scored his first last-place finish in his first full season on the Cup Series tour. The finish came at Brooklyn, Michigan on June 18, where Bonnett’s #5 Armor All Dodge lost the engine after 24 laps of the Gabriel 400. Like Gant, Bonnett would also go on to score eighteen Cup victories, adding to the two he collected for Stacy in 1977.
In the 1978 season finale, the November 19 running of the Los Angeles times 500 at Ontario, California, Ray Elder scored the only last-place finish of his career when his #32 Midland Motor Homes Dodge lost the engine after two laps. The finish came in Elder’s 31st and final Cup start, ending a twelve-year career. Elder scored a pair of victories on the road course in Riverside, California in 1971 and 1972.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) John Kennedy (3)
2nd) Cecil Gordon, Bruce Hill (2)
3rd) Buddy Baker, Walter Ballard, Neil Bonnett, Dave Dion, Ray Elder, Bobby Fisher, Woody Fisher, Harry Gant, Bill Green, Bill Hollar, James Hylton, Gary Johnson, Jerry Jolly, Coo Coo Marlin, Dick May, Jimmy Means, Gary Myers, Ed Negre, Nelson Oswald, Norm Palmer, Jabe Thomas, John Utsman, Bobby Wawak (1)
