Forgotten Teams: StarCom Racing
- Dominic Konareski
- 3 minutes ago
- 3 min read
StarCom Racing was a true field filler team throughout its time in the NASCAR Cup Series, as it sported some of the slowest cars on the grid. Despite being uncompetitive, the team lasted from 2017 through to 2021, competing in 164 races.
On September 25th, 2017, StarCom Fiber announced intentions to field a car in the Cup Series. The team would select veteran driver and co-owner Derrike Cope to drive the No. 00 Chevrolet. The team would make its debut race at Kansas for the 2017 Hollywood Casino 400. StarCom’s debut race was originally intended earlier for Dover, but the team was forced to withdraw due to not having sufficient staff. Once at Kansas, the team would start 40th and finish 40th in what would be a last-place start and finish to mark their debut to NASCAR’s premier series.
StarCom, as new of a team it was, was not necessarily a stranger to the NASCAR Cup Series as prior to 2017 StarCom Fiber sponsored Premium Motorsports. Sponsoring a car and running a full team though are two completely separate feats.
The team would announce that they secured a charter and will run a full time schedule in 2018. The charter that StarCom acquired was leased to them from Richard Childress Racing, which had closed down their No.27 team.
StarCom racing would have various drivers pilot their double zero car. 2018 featured the likes of Jeffery Earnhardt, Landon Cassill, Joey Gase and Tomy Drissi piloting throughout the season with both Cassill and Gase getting the team’s best finish of the season at 18th.
2018 also featured brief appearances of a second StarCom car of the No. 99, which was driven by several drivers to a 39th place in the owners standings.
After the 2018 season, StarCom Racing purchased RCR’s charter and brought on Landon Cassill to drive for them full-time, leading to a 33rd place points finish. Cassill brought the team to a new best finish of 11th at the Daytona summer race, but overall had an average finish of 29th throughout the season.
Quin Houff would then sign with the team before the 2020 season to take over the No.00 full-time. The signing of Houff came as a surprise to many due to the lack of experience in NASCAR’s top-three tiers. Houff had no Truck Series history and only 10 O’Reilly Series races under his belt, jumping basically from a limited run-ARCA schedule to the Cup Series. Houff would drive the car full-time from 2020 through to ‘21.
Houff’s inexperience would show as the team went from a 29th place average finish to a 31st-place average. Houff would cause multiple crashes, leading him to be criticized by Matt DiBenedetto and Brad Keselowski. Despite Houff being notoriously bad at driving, he would record the second-most starts ever in NASCAR Cup Series history with a car using the No.00 with 72 starts (Cassill ranks 3rd with 61 starts). Houff has not appeared in NASCAR’s top three series since 2021, and has seemingly disappeared from racing as a whole since mid-2022.
Due to what would be three-straight last place point finishes, NASCAR would threaten to seize StarCom’s charter. The charter would then be sold to Michael Jordan’s 23XI for just over $13 million.
Although StarCom Racing has been out of NASCAR since the beginning of 2022, the team still operates on a part-time basis in the Michelin Pilot Challenge.
Frankly, StarCom Racing today is a forgotten team despite this article being made some five years after their departure from NASCAR. The team fielded a flurry of drivers and ran very often under the StarCom branding due to lack of true sponsorship. If there is anything that the team could be remembered for is their cool color scheme.
