PHOTO: Rick Ware Racing, @RickWareRacing
SEASON IN REVIEW
Cedar Rapids, Iowa driver Joey Gase picked up his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 2021, scoring three last-place finishes in sixteen races during a thirty-six race season.
The 2021 season marked Gase’s eighth in Cup competition, which saw him again split time with the XFINITY Series. An outspoken advocate for organ donation following the sudden death of his mother Mary Jo Gase, Joey has often run with backing from branches of the Donate Life Foundation across the country. One of these efforts was with Jimmy Means Racing’s XFINITY program at Talladega on May 2, 2015, when Gase finished 5th – Means’ first-ever Top Five in nearly four decades as a NASCAR team owner.
The Cup Series, however, has continued to be a struggle. Other than his 2020 campaign, where he started all but three races, Gase’s sixteen-race slate of Cup races in ’21 was his most in any single year, and all of them came for Rick Ware Racing. For the final season of NASCAR’s “Gen-6” chassis before the 2022 introduction of the “Next-Gen” car, RWR fielded four cars, of which Gase drove two – the #15 and the #53 (including a one-off at Talladega where the #53 was renumbered the #28 in honor of Davey Allison).
There has also been a struggle to finish. Coming into 2021, Gase’s series-best finish came the previous fall at Talladega, where he drove Rick Ware’s #51 Jimco Windows / Donate Life Ford to a 17th-place finish. His best run on a non-superspeedway came at Indianapolis in 2017, when he brought home Jay Robinson’s #15 The Lisa Colagrossi Foundation Chevrolet in 25th. At season’s end, only eighteen of Gase’s ninety Cup starts achieved a finish better than 30th, including 24 DNFs. Increasingly, these DNFs have been the result of rather frightening accidents.
Gase’s first last-place finish of the year came at Michigan on August 22nd, the twenty-fifth round of the season. Last-minute sponsorship from Lisa Express had swapped Gase in for teammate James Davison, but this proved ill-timed. After 29 laps, something broke in the #15 Chevrolet, sending him hard into the outside wall and out of the event. An even harder crash the next month at Las Vegas on September 26 was caused by a right-rear hub failure that caused the wheel to come off the car in Turns 1 and 2, sending his car airborne. Gase was sent to the hospital for observation before he was discharged later that night.
Incidentally, Gase did not finish last in the Las Vegas race as a faulty spindle adapter had sent J.J. Yeley behind the wall in Motorsports Business Management’s #66 Fat Boy Ice Cream Sandwiches Toyota. Gase wouldn’t finish last a second time until Texas on October 17 – eight races after Michigan - when his #53 Explore Branson Chevrolet was collected in a multi-car pileup entering the backstretch after 30 laps.
While Gase was struggling toward the end of the season, the LASTCAR standings remained dominated by three fully-funded full-time Charter teams: Aric Almirola for Stewart-Haas Racing, Kurt Busch for Chip Ganassi Racing, and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. for JTG-Daugherty Racing had each scored three last-place finishes. Heading into the penultimate race at Martinsville on October 31, Almirola held the lead by a single bottom-ten finish over Busch with Stenhouse just one Bottom Five from taking the lead outright. But all three had fewer Bottom Fives and Bottom Tens than the four drivers with two last-place finishes – Gase, Ryan Newman, Justin Haley, and Timmy Hill – meaning each could take the lead with a single last-place finish. That was exactly what happened at Martinsville, where the team fought electrical issues on Gase’s #53 Adkins Chevrolet for the first 100 laps before dropping out of the race.
Heading into the Phoenix finale, Gase was one of five drivers still eligible to take the 2021 LASTCAR Cup Series Championship. The trailing Almirola, Busch, Stenhouse, and Haley could have claimed it simply by finishing last in the 39-car finale. Curiously, it was contact from Stenhouse into 2018 LASTCAR champion Corey LaJoie which triggered the Turn 3 accident that knocked Bubba Wallace’s #23 Door Dash Toyota out of the race, putting Wallace’s 23XI Racing team in last for the first time and handing Gase the LASTCAR title by four Bottom Fives over both Almirola and Busch.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
The season began February 15 with Derrike Cope making his first Cup start since 2018 and first in the Daytona 500 since 2004, taking the wheel of a #15 Jacob Companies Chevrolet built by his StarCom Racing team and locked-in under Rick Ware Racing’s Owner Points. After a difficult week of mechanical issues and the tragic passing of his mother-in-law, Cope only made it to Lap 3 before his tire cut down, putting him in the wall and out of the race – the 29th last-place finish of his Cup career. Cope all but confirmed his retirement afterwards. The next week, Quin Houff gave StarCom’s #00 its only last-place run of the year after 3 laps on the Daytona Infield Road Course. Pressured into selling their Charter during the late season, StarCom shut down at season’s end.
Houff had also wrecked in the first corner of the June 20 race at Nashville, knocking off the right-front wheel of his car, but Chase Elliott’s disqualification for five missing or loose lug nuts put the #9 NAPA Auto Parts Chevrolet in last place for the only time in 2021. The season’s other disqualification came at Daytona on August 28, where runner-up Chris Buescher’s #17 Fifth Third Bank Ford was found with an illegal track bar mount.
Kyle Larson scored ten wins en route to the NASCAR Cup Series Championship, but his first season with Hendrick Motorsports also featured a bizarre last-place finish at Talladega on April 25. With NASCAR still running without practice and qualifying most weekends, Larson’s crew accidentally left a cover over the radiator of his #5 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet, causing the engine to blow after only three laps.
Chip Ganassi Racing closed its doors at the end of 2021, selling their charters to upstart Team Trackhouse. One of Kurt Busch’s three last-place finishes that put him in LASTCAR contention occurred in the Coca-Cola 600 on May 30, where both he and teammate Ross Chastain broke oil pump belts and returned to the track after extended stays in the garage. While Chastain finished under power, Busch barely had time to get up to speed before his engine let go, leaving him in last place.
Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.’s charge up the LASTCAR standings came after the second-consecutive frustrating summer for JTG-Daugherty Racing. From June 6 at Sears Point through July 11 at Atlanta, Stenhouse finished last three times in six races. The team itself finished last three times in a row as Stenhouse’s June 27 engine failure at Pocono and July 11 suspension issue from a wreck in Atlanta came on either side of teammate Ryan Preece’s backup car losing an engine just six laps into the Cup Series’ return to Road America on July 4. At both Sears Point and Atlanta, Stenhouse attempted to ride out damage from an early crash, but lost an engine in the former and pulled into the garage with two laps to go in the latter.
On August 15 at the Indianapolis Grand Prix Circuit, Cody Ware – Gase’s teammate at Rick Ware Racing – was the victim of a Damaged Vehicle Policy mistake. Early in the race, Ware cut an oil line after he was spun by Aric Almirola in the early laps. When Ware pulled into the garage to repair the line, he’d been placed on the DVP for the spin, and was eliminated after 46 laps completed.
NASCAR’s failure to throw a caution for rain in the early laps of Loudon on July 18 caused three Joe Gibbs Racing teammates running at the front of the field to spin out. While Martin Truex, Jr. and Denny Hamlin avoided serious damage, race leader Kyle Busch in the #18 Interstate Batteries Toyota backed into the outside wall, ending his race. The team had loaded up by the time the race restarted.
Only four drivers scored the first last-place finishes of their Cup careers in 2021, and each were significant:
On March 29, Anthony Alfredo’s #38 Dude Wipes Ford was collected in a multi-car pileup in the Cup Series’ first dirt track race since September 30, 1970 – a rain-postponed event at Bristol, which had been temporarily covered in clay.
Justin Haley’s run in the #77 Diamond Creek Water Chevrolet at Richmond on April 18 ended with engine failure after completing only the first lap. Haley was the only retiree that day, and completed the LASTCAR Triple Crown following last-place runs in both XFINITY and Trucks earlier in his young career.
On May 2, Josh Bilicki set a new record for most laps complete by a last-place finisher of a Cup race at Kansas when his #52 RBR Aviation Ford finished under power with 250 of 267 laps complete. The record was set after the final restart following a wreck involving JTG-Daugherty Racing teammates Ryan Preece and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., who were the only race’s DNFs. Like Haley, Bilicki too completed the LASTCAR Triple Crown.
Finally on June 26, Cole Custer’s #41 HaasTooling.com Ford was eliminated in a Lap 14 crash at Pocono, which was the first race of a two-day double-header. Custer started a backup car the next day and climbed from last on the grid to finish in 24th.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) Aric Almirola [4 B5s], Kurt Busch [4 B5s], Joey Gase [8 B5s], Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. [4 B5s] (3)
2nd) Justin Haley, Timmy Hill, Ryan Newman (2)
3rd) Anthony Alfredo, Justin Allgaier, Josh Bilicki, Chris Buescher, Kyle Busch, Derrike Cope, Cole Custer, James Davison, Chase Elliott, Chad Finchum, Quin Houff, Kyle Larson, Corey LaJoie, Michael McDowell, Ryan Preece, Bubba Wallace, Cody Ware, J.J. Yeley (1)
