Patience paying off for Cassill headed into 2015

When you drive a racecar for a living, patience can be hard to come by.

When you drive a racecar for a team that isn't considered among the top in the sport, and your livelihood depends on performance, patience can be especially hard to come by.

But it's that quality that's led Cedar Rapids native Landon Cassill back to Daytona International Speedway for just his third Daytona 500 try. It's the quality that's kept him with (newly-named) Hillman Smith Racing in the Sprint Cup Series and JD Motorsports in the Xfinity (formerly Nationwide) Series for two straight seasons, now entering the third with both.

Two small teams constantly in search of sponsorship and better equipment with a driver constantly in search of performance and finishes that will earn him the respect of his peers. Without patience, he never gets a career-best 4th-place finish in the fall Cup race at Talladega, nor does he get three top 10s and a 12th-place points finish in the then-Nationwide Series in 2014.

And without patience, he isn't as comfortable personally and professionally as he's ever been.

'There's a lot of opportunities I'd like to get that would put me in better equipment,” Cassill said. 'But having my focus where it has been, on Hillman (Smith) Racing and the team that I'm with has paid off pretty well for me so far.”

Cassill is only 25 years old, but it feels like he's been involved with NASCAR for a lot longer than that.

His fans in Iowa remember the teenager who ran Super Late Models at Hawkeye Downs and elsewhere, and when he was hand-picked to be a Hendrick Motorsports development driver as soon as he graduated from Cedar Rapids Jefferson in the spring of 2008. He had a ride with JR Motorsports and seemingly a limitless future.

The time between then and now is well-documented with the ups and many downs; the changing of teams and sponsors. So when he comes upon a little continuity like he's found these last few years, and then legitimate success in both series, it would be easy for he, his team and his fans to get carried away.

On the Cup side, 2014 brought the most success of his career, particularly at the restrictor-plate tracks of Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway - the basket in which Hillman Smith Racing put all its eggs. He had the three best finishes of his career in three of the four visits to those speedways, starting with 12th in the 2014 Daytona 500, 11th at Talladega in the spring, then the aforementioned 4th in the fall. And even in his 31st-place finish at Daytona in July, he started third and led five laps - all under green - before a crash ended his day.

The success there, along with extended commitments from sponsors Carsforsale.com, CRC Brakleen and Snap Fitness and a new engine agreement with Earnhardt-Childress Racing Engines puts his team in the best position of its existence. And the 'Smith” in Hillman Smith Racing is new co-owner Gordon Smith, who helps bring more financial stability to the team. The plan for 2015 is much the same as 2014, with hope for improvements elsewhere.

'It's still the same focus, on the restrictor plate tracks, but because of the new engine program this year, it's going to kind of broaden the range of tracks we'll be competitive at,” Cassill said. 'We're going to be able to have a little more of an impact at more races than we were last year, where we weren't running an ECR engine. Hopefully it's going to take us to the next level everywhere.

'And at places like short tracks, where we ran well without ECR engines, hopefully it gets us up in the range where we can run in the top 20 easily; maybe we can put up a 15th-place finish at Richmond. That's kind of the goal. It should improve us across the board pretty well.”

Cassill's practice with patience reigns in the possibility of getting overexcited or unrealistic with his team's possibilities for this season.

He's said repeatedly he's happy with how he's helped build both Hillman Smith Racing and JD Motorsports from where they were when he joined them. Over the course of three or so years, he and the teams have looked for small victories - and both he and the team have been more than happy when they've come along.

But with where Cassill and his teams are headed into 2015 - especially on the Cup side, with the new engines and a few chassis purchased from Richard Childress Racing - it's become realistic to believe small victories could be actual victories at a superspeedway after how he ran last season.

It all starts with the Daytona 500, one week from Sunday.

'It's still the same smart goals - we want top-10, top-five finishes, but we really want to win,” Cassill said. 'Because we've put together so many good finishes, it's probably more realistic (to get a win) than it was saying the same thing this time last year. We've proven ourselves a little bit with our performance.

'I want to back up what we did last year at superspeedways. We didn't just do it once, we didn't do it twice; we ran up front four times and had three seriously good finishes. I just want to continue that. I want to keep pounding it into peoples' heads that we're a threat at those tracks.”

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com