Cassill’s Daytona 500 ends up in flames

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Landon Cassill is clinging to the feeling he had Thursday night after he raced his Hillman-Smith Racing Chevrolet into the 57th Daytona 500.

The Cedar Rapids native is doing so because in the three days since, he's had basically nothing but disappointment in both his NASCAR Sprint Cup and Xfinity Series races. The 25-year-old driver had driven inside the top 15 before his ECR engine failed spectacularly on the backstretch of Daytona International Speedway, bursting into flames before he came to a stop. He was the first car out, relegating him to 43rd finishing position in the race, won by Joey Logano.

If the go-to word Saturday night was 'frustrating,” the go-to Sunday was, 'bummer.”

'It's just a real bummer,” Cassill said. 'But the most important thing is we raced our way in and we were here. That was out No. 1 goal. We'll be fine. It's just a tough way to start the season.”

Most often when an engine fails, unless it drops a cylinder first, the driver has no warning the failure is coming.

That was the case Sunday for Cassill.

'There was no indication,” Cassill said. 'That's how engine failures usually are.

'But man, we've got such a good car and such a good team at this track. I just hate it that it's an engine failure. We've got a new program with RCR and running their engines. We put a lot of faith in their program, so they'll make it right.”

His weekend was marred by a wreck in Xfinity Series qualifying, which forced his JD Motorsports team to go to a backup car. The backup wasn't close to ready to go when they wheeled it out of the trailer, and the scurry of changes left some parts loose. That resulted in a parts failure during the race that sent him behind the wall, leaving him incredibly frustrated after the race.

The moments after the Daytona 500, though, weren't nearly as frustrating.

His team had switched engines - as had every other team in the garage - after the Duel 150-mile qualifying races on Thursday. The frustration of Saturday stemmed from the events of the day overall, but also because what cost Cassill a good finish was in large part preventable within the realm of preparation.

Sunday's engine failure was out of his and his team's hands - as engine failures almost always are. He can take the confidence he left Talladega with last fall into the spring race at the Alabama track because all indications were, through the Duel on Thursday and the brief 20 laps on Sunday, that his team's strength at the restrictor plate tracks was still there.

'I was feeling really good about it because it was turning into a handling race,” Cassill said. 'I was in the right lane up high, passing a lot of cars - not just because of the draft but because of handling. My car was handling better than most (in the early laps) I felt. I was really happy about where the race was going. It's a real bummer it didn't work out well for us.”

It's never easy to have the weekend Cassill did, but he's been racing long enough to know days like those happen.

He channeled is usually-positive attitude and tried to look up as the Sprint Cup Series moves on to Atlanta Motor Speedway next week.

'You've just got to bounce back and make it better next time,” Cassill said. 'That's just part of racing. There's good days and bad days. Thursday was a really good day for us. I would rather have had a good day on Thursday and a bad day today than the other way around (and missing the race.)

'We're going to have to (work hard) to get our points back and get locked into the field at these races (coming up). But I think we'll be OK.”

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