2019 Cup Series Season Preview: Landon Cassill

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

Editor’s note: Motorsports Tribune will be previewing the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season for the full-time drivers in the series leading into February’s 61st annual running of the Daytona 500.

Age: 29

Years in Cup: Nine

Career Wins: Zero

Landon Cassill has been a journeyman driver throughout his career in NASCAR, starting out with promise in the Hendrick Motorsports stable as a development driver and bouncing around through different organizations in the years since.

After finding himself on the sidelines at the start of the 2018 Cup Series season, StarCom Racing came calling at Week 6 and Cassill was back in the saddle when the series rolled into Martinsville, replacing Jeffrey Earnhardt behind the wheel.

Cassill competed in all but one of the remaining races for the team, splitting time between the No. 00 and No. 99 cars and delivering the newly formed team a total of seven top-25 finishes, with his best finish coming at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in September with an 18^th place finish.

Over the offseason, StarCom announced that Cassill will return to the team in 2019 as their full-time driver, along with other key changes in an effort to boost their performance. The team secured a charter from Richard Childress Racing, as well as electing to use ECR Engines in their Chevrolets for the upcoming season.

“We are coming off a successful first year for our new owners and team,” said Derrike Cope, SCR Team Manager. “We certainly endured a great deal of adversity as a start-from-scratch Cup team, learning along the way with positive results for the most part. With a continued commitment from our owners, Mike and Matt Kohler and Bill Woehlemann, we are looking forward to the prospects of being a better race team in 2019.

“We are extremely proud and pleased to have acquired the charter from RCR. We are excited to have contracted Landon Cassill for this coming year as I have enjoyed working with him in 2018 and what his experience brings to the race team. We are working hard now preparing for Daytona and cannot wait for the season to start!”

While StarCom won’t be lighting up the scoreboard with wins, having a veteran driver like Cassill in the driver’s seat and upgraded engine performance from ECR, the team should be able to easily match their finishes from this past season, if not beat them.

“I’m very excited to be back with StarCom Racing for 2019,” said Cassill. “We put in a lot of work at the end of 2018 to make improvements for this coming year, and I think that work will pay off across the board. The team is making big investments in cars and engines to step up our program, and it only motivates me to bring 110% as a driver.”