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SEASON IN REVIEW
Spokane, Washington driver Chad Little scored his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 1997 when he finished last in three races out of twenty-seven starts in a thirty-two-race season. One year after losing a bottom-five tiebreaker to Derrike Cope, Little won a three-way bottom-five tiebreaker over Robby Gordon and Geoffrey Bodine, 7-6-5. Little and Gordon were tied for the most Bottom Fives following the Exide NASCAR Select Batteries 400 at Richmond, Virginia on September 6, but Little broke the tie with a 40th-place run in the DieHard 500 at Talladega, Alabama on October 12.
Little was competing in his twelfth season on the Cup Series tour and his first full-time year since 1991. His best career finish before the 1997 season came in a one-off for owner Harry Melling at Talladega, Alabama on July 26, 1992, when he came home 8th. Melling’s was one of nine teams Little drove for from 1986 through 1996, which included the #97 Pontiac team owned by Greg Pollex. Pollex and Little had much success in the NASCAR Busch Series, scoring six victories, eleven Top Fives and thirteen Top Tens in 1995 alone, when he came home 2nd in series points. The two made a handful of Cup starts together in 1996, building towards a 1997 where John Deere came on as the Pollex team’s primary sponsor.
However, though Little’s green-and-yellow #97 Pontiac was one of the most distinctive-looking cars in the field, they had terrible luck in the 1997 season. Little scored just one top-ten finish in 1997 and missed five races, including the season-opening Daytona 500. He also scored five DNFs, including three last-place finishes. The first occurred at Martinsville, Virginia on April 20, when he finished under power, but six laps down in the 42nd spot. The next was eight races later in the Pepsi 400 in Daytona Beach, Florida on July 5, where he was taken out in a crash after 32 laps. The third finish came at Watkins Glen, New York during the Bud at the Glen, where this time engine failure took him out after just eight laps.
Following the Watkins Glen race, Jack Roush began to invest in the team, eventually merging the #97 into his three-car operation and converting the John Deere machines from Pontiac to Ford. The result was Little’s best season of his career in 1998, when he improved from 36th to 15th in points on the heels of seven Top Tens and a career-best runner-up finish to teammate Mark Martin in Fort Worth, Texas on April 5, 1998. However, while Little and Roush’s relationship continued for nearly three seasons, Little slipped back down the point standings and was released from the team late in 2000, replaced by up-and-coming Truck Series standout Kurt Busch.
After his release, Little made just one more Cup Series start - the 217th of his career - at Dover, Delaware on June 2, 2002, when he finished 33rd in Bill Baumgardner’s #74 Staff America Chevrolet. He has continued to work for NASCAR ever since, and in 2013 became the director of the NASCAR Truck Series.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
Owner-driver Geoffrey Bodine, tied with Little and Gordon for the most last-place finishes in 1997, nearly became the first Cup Series driver to score four last-place finishes in a row. At Sonoma, California on May 4, Bodine’s #7 QVC Ford started 10th and finished last due to an engine failure after just ten laps. The finish dropped him to 44th in the final running order, the last time a Cup Series last-place finisher has finished worse than 43rd (as 43-car fields became standard across all Cup races in 1998). Bodine led two laps the following week in Talladega, Alabama, but his engine let go after 78 laps. Bodine was then injured in practice for the following race, the Coca-Cola 600 at Concord, North Carolina, but when brother Todd Bodine drove in relief, the car finished last year again due to engine failure after 47 laps. Geoff climbed back into his car for the next race at Dover, Delaware on June 1, where he was taken out in a crash with Bobby Hillin, Jr. and Mike Wallace on lap 241. However, Hillin completed three fewer laps than Bodine, and he edged Bodine for last place by that margin. Bodine’s third last-place finish of 1997 came at Concord, North Carolina on October 5, where he crashed after 100 laps of the UAW-GM Quality 500.
Two inaugural Cup Series races were run in 1997 with two different last-place finishers knocked-out in early crashes. At the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas on April 6, Darrell Waltrip’s #17 Western Auto Chevrolet was one of thirteen cars gobbled-up in an accident entering Turn One on the opening lap due to a faulty track surface. It was the 11th last-place finish of Waltrip’s career. At the California Speedway (now the Auto Club Speedway of Southern California) in Fontana, California, 1995 LASTCAR Cup Series Champion Hut Stricklin’s #8 Circuit City Chevrolet crashed after 28 laps.
The year 1997 also had the fewest first-time last-place finishers of any NASCAR Cup Series season - only Roy “Buckshot” Jones scored his first last-place run in the season-ending NAPA 500 in Hampton, Georgia on November 16 when his #00 Aquafresh Pontiac crashed out after 38 laps. As of this writing, every single NASCAR Cup Series season has had at least one first-time last-place finisher.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) Geoffrey Bodine [5 B5s], Robby Gordon [6 B5s], Chad Little [7 B5s] (3)
2nd) Sterling Marlin, Darrell Waltrip (2)
3rd) Loy Allen, Jr., Brett Bodine, Todd Bodine, Ricky Craven, Wally Dallenbach, Jr., Jeff Gordon, Bobby Hillin, Jr., Buckshot Jones, Robert Pressley, Greg Sacks, Morgan Shepherd, Jimmy Spencer, Billy Standridge, Hut Stricklin, Dick Trickle, Kenny Wallace, Mike Wallace, Rusty Wallace, Michael Waltrip (1)
