SEASON IN REVIEW
Cedar Rapids, Iowa driver Landon Cassill picked up his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 2015, scoring four last-place finishes in thirty-six starts during a thirty-six race season. Cassill claimed the championship by a single finish over second-year driver Alex Bowman, with whom Cassill was tied for eleven races from Bowman’s third finish at Indianapolis on July 26 until Cassill’s fourth at Kansas on October 18. At the Homestead finale, Bowman was still in position to win the title if he finished last, thus tying Cassill in finishes and winning a bottom-five tiebreaker of 8-7. However, when Clint Bowyer locked-up the last-place finish in Michael Waltrip Racing’s final event on Lap 151, Cassill secured the title.
Cassill was competing in his sixth season on the Cup Series tour, but had been active in NASCAR’s top three divisions since 2007, when he was a development driver for Hendrick Motorsports. At age 17, he made his Busch Series debut at Gateway on July 21, 2007, starting 6th in Hendrick’s iconic #24 before a late crash left him 32nd. In 2008, while driving for JR Motorsports in Busch, he dabbled in the Truck Series, earning his first top-five finish with a 3rd at Milwaukee driving for David Dollar. Despite a combined eight top-ten finishes between the two series, Cassill was out of a ride for all but one Nationwide start in 2009, when he finished 10th for James Finch.
Cassill returned to NASCAR in 2010, making at least one start in all three of the top divisions. The 20-year-old driver made his Cup debut at Michigan on June 13, 2010, again driving for Finch, and finished 38th with rear gear trouble on the unsponsored #09 Phoenix Racing Chevrolet. Sharing time with two other “start-and-park” organizations, Cassill quickly made himself known as a fast qualifier when he made all but two of his eighteen attempts that season, finishing 33rd in his lone full-race run at Richmond for TRG Motorsports.
In 2011, Cassill and Finch reunited for a run at the Nationwide Series opener at Daytona, where Cassill pushed race winner Tony Stewart to the victory, earning the youngster a strong 3rd-place finish of his own. Following another three-race “start-and-park” stint for Germain Racing, Cassill and Finch made a full-season run in Cup with sponsorship from Security Benefit, the Thank A Teacher Today foundation, and Finch’s Phoenix Construction sponsorship. In their first full-race run together at Fontana, Cassill came home a career-best 24th, qualified a season-best 6th at Talladega in the spring, then returned to Michigan and improved his career-best to 12th.
In 2012, Cassill was tabbed as one of the drivers for BK Racing, the two-car team formed from the remnants of the closed Team Red Bull. Cassill completed his first full season in Cup, including a 22nd in his first Daytona 500, but ended the year a disappointing 31st in points with no finishes better than 18th. He returned in 2013 to run for Joe Falk’s team Circle Sport in Cup while balancing a near-full Nationwide Series schedule for Johnny Davis’ JD Motorsports, and has campaigned exclusively for Nationwide Series points ever since.
Cassill’s Cup ride in 2015 was with Hillman-Smith Racing, a Circle Sport expansion team #40 to go race alongside CS’ primary #33. While the #33 was shared on a part-time basis with Richard Childress Racing, which fielded Cup prospects like Brian Scott and Ty Dillon, Cassill alone drove the #40, and at times turned heads on the superspeedways. Following a 12th-place finish in the 2014 Daytona 500 and an 11th in the spring race at Talladega, Cassill came home a career-best 4th in the fall Talladega event, where he was in position to make a move on race winner Brad Keselowski in an unsponsored Chevrolet. It was a huge recovery for Cassill and team, which suffered two DNQs in the first three races of the season.
Like 2014, Cassill’s 2015 began on a frustrating note as he became the first NASCAR Cup driver to be classified last in the first two points races of the season since Glenn Dunaway in the inaugural 1949 campaign. Both of these 43rd-place finishes were due to engine failure – a fiery blast down the backstretch for his #40 CarsForSale.com Chevrolet after 18 laps of the Daytona 500 on February 22 followed by a Lap 92 exit in the #40 Snap Fitness Chevrolet at Atlanta on March 1. The third finish came six races later at Bristol on April 19 due to crash damage on his #40 Link-Belt Mid-Atlantic Chevrolet. He did not finish last again for twenty-three races – a third engine failure in the Chase race at Kansas on October 18 in a while driving a pink #40 CarsForSale.com / Breast Cancer Awareness Chevrolet.
Despite the struggles, Cassill still came home with a handful of good Cup Series runs, including a season-best 13th in the July race at Daytona and a 14th in the August race at Pocono. Besides his last-place finishes, he failed to finish just two other races and qualified for all thirty-six for the first time since 2012.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
Kyle Busch became the first driver to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship with at least one last-place finish in a points race since 2003, when Matt Kenseth lost an engine in the Homestead finale after clinching during the previous round at Rockingham. Busch, who missed the opening eleven races of the season following injuries sustained in the Nationwide opener at Daytona, picked up the fifth last-place run of his career at Michigan on June 14, when his #18 M&M’s Crispy Toyota crashed while battling inside the Top 5 on Lap 52. Busch went on to win four of the next five races on his way to the title.
Finishing sixth that night in Homestead was four-time Sprint Cup Champion Jeff Gordon, who retired while being one of the three drivers in position to claim the title from Busch. Gordon, the 1993 LASTCAR Cup Series Champion, ended his years of full-time competition with 93 wins and 5 last-place finishes in 797 career series starts, plus one additional last-place run in his 73-race Busch Series career. Gordon nearly finished last at Indianapolis in July following an early crash, but he was edged by LASTCAR runner-up Alex Bowman before race’s end.
Phil Parsons Racing changed hands midway through the 2015 season and its #98 became the second team for Premium Motorsports, which had already acquired Tommy Baldwin Racing’s derelict #36 team in the 2014-2015 offseason. Josh Wise left the team after scoring his first last-place run in the #98 at Kentucky on July 11 and was replaced by several drivers, including Timmy Hill. Twice in the summer of 2015, Hill’s #98 missed the start of the race due to mechanical issues. At Indianapolis on July 26, Hill’s backup car snapped an axle coming to the green, requiring 42 laps of repairs before he joined the race and finished 41st. At Michigan on August 16, Hill’s car cracked an oil pump and leaked fluid during the pace laps, requiring a stay behind the wall until Lap 7. The car leaked again on Lap 14, was black-flagged, then returned on Lap 55 only to be parked for trailing smoke. The resulting last-place finish made Hill the first 43rd-place driver parked from a race since Mike Wallace’s #64 at Pocono on August 3, 2009.
Eight drivers scored the first last-place finishes of their Cup career in 2015, headed by Kasey Kahne, who in his 417th Cup start at Pocono on August 2 spun off Turn 3 on Lap 4 and crashed his #5 Aquafina Chevrolet at the entrance to pit road. Kahne would follow-up this finish with another at Charlotte on October 11, when his #5 HendrickRideAlong.com Chevrolet found the outside wall.
At Bristol on August 22, Michael Annett scored his first Cup Series last-place finish after his #46 Pilot / Flying J Chevrolet lost the engine just one-quarter lap into the race, leaving him 500 laps down after the sudden retirement. It was the first time a Cup driver finished last without completing a lap since Danica Patrick’s crash in Turn 1 at Kansas on October 6, 2013 and the first time a driver failed to finish the first lap at Bristol since Bill Green on August 26, 1978.
Also among the first-timers was Austin Dillon, whose Richard Childress Racing team managed to get the #3 American Ethanol E15 Chevrolet back on track following a crash at Chicagoland on September 20, but were unable to keep the #3 from its first Cup Series last-place run since September 28, 1992. The Chicagoland race was one of two Cup events in 2015 where all 43 starters finished under power, the other being at Fontana, where Sam Hornish, Jr.’s #9 Medallion Bank / Mercury Marine Ford was 54 laps back.
Both Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson once again came close to securing their first-ever Cup Series last-place finishes. Harvick earned the fourth and fifth of his Cup next-to-last-place finishes after an engine problem at Pocono on August 2 and a tangle with Johnson at Chicago on September 20, but both times the Stewart-Haas Racing team managed to stay laps ahead of the 43rd-place driver. Johnson was celebrating his 500th start at Dover on October 4, a track he had won at ten times previous, but a busted seal cost him nearly forty laps early on, placing him 43rd. The #48 returned to the track and managed to come home 41st following two other late crashes involving rookies Jeb Burton and Brett Moffitt, but the run still cost Johnson a spot in the second elimination round of the Chase. Through 2015, Harvick and Johnson had both made more than 1,000 combined Cup starts without finishing last in a single one of them.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) Landon Cassill (4)
2nd) Alex Bowman (3)
3rd) Aric Almirola, Michael Annett, Ryan Blaney, Clint Bowyer, Timmy Hill, Kasey Kahne, J.J. Yeley (2)
4th) Justin Allgaier, A.J. Allmendinger, Trevor Bayne, Jeb Burton, Kyle Busch, Austin Dillon, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Joey Gase, David Gilliland, Sam Hornish, Jr., Bobby Labonte, Brian Scott, Tony Stewart, Cole Whitt, Josh Wise (1)
