Week-in and week-out, 43 competitors put their lives on the line. But some people have the audacity to question whether or not racecar drivers are athletes. No matter one’s opinion, in recent years, many NASCAR drivers have upped the ante in their conditioning. From six-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson to Hendrick Motorsports teammate Kasey Kahne, Carl Edwards and more. One driver in particular is Landon Cassill.
Cassill doesn’t compete for NASCAR Sprint Cup Series points, though he is running the entire schedule. His primary focus is driving the No. 01 XFINITY Series car for JD Motorsports. On the Cup side, he is the full-time driver in the No. 40 Chevrolet for Hillman Racing and currently sits 34th in owner’s points. For an underfunded team, Hillman Racing has overachieved and Cassill has a pair of top-15 finishes in 2015.
“I think that it’s just an unfairly educated thing to say,” Landon Cassill told Speedway Digest in regards of the common people say that racecar drivers aren’t athletes. “They are the people who clearly don’t see what our body goes through. My heart rate over the course of a four hour race is very similar to other endurance athletes like a marathoner or a bike racer.”
Cassill is a tri-athlete. In his down time from driving the No. 40 car, you might catch the 26 year-old in the local pool or even on the side of the run jogging or cycling. The Iowa native has been in the process of his new training techniques over the past couple of years, and has brought his body to new levels.
“It really just depends on the day,” Cassill saidof his daily training. “I used to try and take Mondays off, but now I’ll usually get a swim or a run or both in, but they’re easy. On Tuesdays, I’ll usually get up around 5:00 and swim pretty early to get that over with. Then, I’ll go home and hang out with my wife and son for a little bit. I usually do a hard bike and run work out right before lunch.”
Depending on the person, the average daily workout is roughly 30 minutes. But Cassill’s is nearly seven times that amount.
“The hard bike and run from start-to-finish usually takes me about two-and-a-half hours,” Cassill said. “Total, probably about three and-a-half hours of working out.”
Despite the main focus of driving the racecar, Cassill has been able to train in order to help him behind the wheel. The amount of focus it takes to run door-to-door at 200 mph is unimaginable unless you are in the trenches with your body each day. He doesn’t like to make his workouts easy either. On top of swimming, cycling and running, he maintains a steady workout routine with the help of one of his sponsors.
“I go to the gym at Snap Fitness,” he said. “I do my strength training there, which strength training for a tri-athlete is really important because it just helps with injury prevention and helps to get you stronger for your run workouts and bike workouts.”
Snap Fitness Haas been featured on Cassill’s car four times this season.
As time progresses it seems that more racecar drivers are able to transition to more of this type of training.
“I think it’s because as racecar drivers we’re endurance athletes,” Cassill said of why he prefers triathlons. “For a triathlon to do a long course, half-iron man and iron man distance triathlon is a real endurance sport. I think because of our elevated heart rate in the racecars, I think that kind of thing really translates to behind the wheel.”
In order to take his training to the next level, Cassill follows a strict diet. A diet is one of the biggest keys in the process of training because if your body isn’t taking in the right carbohydrates and electrolytes, then there might be some fault to that person.
“I eat a plan-based diet,” Cassill said. “I get my protein from plants, and it’s a pretty cool way to eat. It’s much cleaner and I feel like I perform really well and recover really well. At the race track and on the road traveling, I used products like Beyond Meat to make a great Beast Burger, which is a plan-based protein burger and it has just seemed to work for me.”
Fitness has become a large part of success behind the wheel for Cassill. The better shape that the driver is in, the more likely they are to have sustainability behind the wheel. For some drivers, being fit has been a part if their entire life, for others is has become a more recent method.
“It’s been a part of my whole life, but really in the past couple of years is when I’ve really taken it seriously and seen the benefits of it,” said Cassill. “I was at a point where I knew I needed to take myself to the next level as a racecar driver and as an endurance athlete.”
Being fit behind the wheel can often give a driver the advantage and the endurance that they will need in order to be competitive to drive continuously for 500 or 600 miles. In doing so, it lets their respective team know that while they are busting their butt in the shop to put competitive cars on the track, the driver in return is kicking butt and taking their job just as seriously.
“From the perception of my team and my guys, that they know I’m doing everything that I can to be the best driver that I can be,” said Cassill. “I think that’s extremely important that they know that I’m not leaving anything out there and that at the end of the race they know that their driver is as fresh as any of them.”
During the Brickyard 400 weekend, Cassill kept track of the weight he lost because of the unbearable heat and the new aerodynamic package, which kept heat in the car.
“I basically lost 15 pounds, but I had drunk seven pounds of fluid over the course of the race,” said Cassill. “I drank about 110 oz. of fluid in the car. At the end of the race, I had a net loss of eight pounds.”
“Those are definitely tough days at the track. I would say that was one of the harder days.”
“The recovery is extremely important and my diet is what I rely on for recovery. Eating the right foods is important, even the products that I drink inside of the car. I’m not just drinking plain water in the car, I’m drinking a drink called Infinit, which is a company that makes a custom-mix based on what I feel like I need and we work together to come up with a formula that I need. Having the right mix helps with your recovery and eating the right meal afterward and getting proper rest that night. I’m usually okay by Monday afternoon.”
It’s not an unknown fact that all drivers don’t train, and some have been able to get by with not training. Just imagine if they went outside of their elements and did train. The on-track performance may skyrocket.
“Obviously there are drivers that aren’t fit and their skill of driving a racecar is what carries them over their fitness in my opinion,” said Cassill. “I think that fitness can help take you to the next driver and those drivers who aren’t fit would see quite a gain in their performance if they took their skill and complimented it with fitness.”
Shifting over to racing, the Iowa native has overachieved in an underfunded car. There are some races where the No. 40 team has gone un-sponsored to support the funds to race. Mike Hillman and Hillman Racing compete simply for the joy of racing. They work just as hard, if not harder, than the bigger teams since they don’t have the amount of employees that teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing do. But the team does what it can with what they have.
The same can be said in the XFINITY Series. Cassill drives for the aforementioned JD Motorsports and currently sits 19th in the series standings after missing a handful of races. Much like Hillman Racing, JD Motorsports doesn’t have many employees and still puts three cars on the track at every race. Cassill has one top-10 finish in 2015, but is looking to improve on that in the last third of the season.
Most recently, the once Hendrick Motorsports developmental driver had an incredible run at Pocono. The No. 40 ran in the top-25 for the majority of the race and even qualified well. Due to fuel mileage, the team was able to capitalize on a top-15 finish.
“It was phenomenal,” Cassill said of the result. “The team worked so hard. We had a plan on the fuel-mileage side of things that was probably two pit stops out from the end of the race; we knew what we wanted to do. It was very deserving of my team.”
For a small team, runs like that and even at New Hampshire, when the No. 40 car started 13th, which speaks for itself. At New Hampshire, Cassill was running in the top-15 for the majority of that race until a late-race caution caught them off guard and trapped them one lap down. He was outrunning drivers like Denny Hamlin, who is a two-time winner at Loudon, as well as Johnson. With runs like this it can give the little team that could momentum for the future.
“Hopefully, it builds a lot of momentum,” said Cassill. “Every week is still a new week and it’s tough to run that well week-in and week-out against these big teams that are so good every week. We seem to be doing really well and we’re getting a lot of recognition for it, which is great.”
Like many small teams, Hillman Racing’s best races seem to be the restrictor plate tracks of Daytona and Talladega. Cassill has done well in those four races throughout his Cup career. In October of last season, Cassill took home a fourth-place result, his best ever in the Cup Series. On the white flag lap he was running as high as second and that demonstrated that he is not afraid of those tracks and that a true “underdog” can win.
“We just build really fast cars and Hillman Racing does a really good job of putting a fast car under me so I have something to race with,” Cassill said of his performance at restrictor plates. “I would really like to just continue the success that we’ve had where we seem to really be overachieving where we’re at and where our funding level is. That kind of keeps us focused and keeps us working hard on it. This is a really high in the sky goal, but I want to go to Talladega with a shot of winning the race.”
It would not be surprising to see this athlete excel at Talladega and if not pick up his first career victory, a solid result nonetheless. Cassill is a true warrior of auto racing and no matter what circumstances are put in front of him; the 26-year old has the endurance to overcome them.
- Josh Wise Adapting to The Motorsports Group - August 14, 2016
- Carl Edwards has Fully Transitioned into Joe Gibbs Racing - August 5, 2016
- Chris Buescher Steals a Victory in Soggy Pocono Event - August 1, 2016