LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Through this decade, winners of what's now the Nationwide Series' Raybestos Rookie of the Year Award have thrived in the upper levels of NASCAR, and 2008 winner Landon Cassill hopes that trend continues.

Names such as Kevin Harvick, Greg Biffle, Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and now David Ragan are well entrenched in the Sprint Cup Series for 2009. Only 2006 rookie of the year Danny O'Quinn Jr. has never had the opportunity to drive in a full Cup season.

Nationwide Series

2008 Rookie Standings

Driver	R	W	T5	T10	Pts*
L. Cassill	19	0	0	5	--
B. Clauson	21	0	1	2	-8
D. Franchitti	14	0	1	2	-33
C. Gale	13	0	1	3	-43
B. Keselowski^	11	0	0	0	-95

* Behind | ^ Brian Keselowski

But for 2009, and despite having the sport's most popular driver solidly in his corner, Cassill's in the precarious position of knowing he has a job, with Hendrick Motorsports, but he doesn't have a ride, due to lack of sponsorship.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. owns JR Motorsports, the team that fielded Cassill's cars, in a partnership with Hendrick Motorsports. Even that has gained the team little more than enough sponsorship to run Cassill's full-time Nationwide Series teammate, Brad Keselowski, in 2009.

"Well, I was proud of Landon," Earnhardt said of his rookie champion. "He did a good job for the most part of the year. He got the finishes he needed to win. He had some pretty good competition [with] Bryan [Clauson]. He [Cassill] got some really good finishes at parts of the year and showed he's got a lot of talent."

That may end up being the best thing Cassill has going for him after he became only the third driver to win the title while running a partial schedule, following O'Quinn and David Stremme, who won in 2003.

"I've had a lot of offers to drive Late Model cars, so I can do plenty of that [next season]," Cassill said Friday. "I'm lucky to be involved with Hendrick Motorsports and all the support they continue to offer me.

"As long as I'm driving a Chevrolet, I think they would support me if I had some opportunities there -- and I actually much prefer to be driving Chevrolets. But I'm still employed, and that's better than a lot of other people."

Cassill, 19, made 19 starts in a partial schedule in JR Motorsports' No. 5 Chevrolet and was the best finishing rookie in seven of them. He doesn't know when his next will come.

"Right now, I have no races scheduled in the 5 car, which only has seven races with sponsorship next season," Cassill said. "Things are pretty tight over there at JR as far as money goes."

"We just hope somebody is going to call us here in the next several months so we can put something together for next year and get the 5 car back to a full-time program," Earnhardt said. "We've been searching around for several different deals, and we actually had a program for 18 races, but it ended up conflicting with something else; way, way down the line, so it wasn't even anything to do with me or my team.

“

Right now, I have no races scheduled in the 5 car, which only has seven races with sponsorship next season. Things are pretty tight over there at JR as far as money goes."

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LANDON CASSILL

"But it's tough. You find something, you think you've got it saved and you think you're going to have a sponsorship, and it don't work out. It's real tough."

Cassill accrued a pole position and five top-10 finishes as he ended the season 26th in the standings. Cassill narrowly defeated Chip Ganassi Racing's Clauson for the award despite not starting the season finale.

"I'm just really proud of everybody -- my whole team -- for working so hard for me this year," Cassill said. "I ran a limited schedule, and I had some really good races. At times it didn't look so good, and at times it looked great.

"You know, it was a real compliment to me, and it was flattering when we went to [the season's next-to-last race at] Phoenix, and all my guys knew it was my last race, and their focus was getting me the finish I needed.

"I can't thank them enough for that, for being that focused on winning rookie of the year. My guys, National Guard, supported me all year -- Dale Jr., who owns my car and the team. It's an honor."

Clauson made two more starts, 21, than Cassill. He finished 27th in the standings with a pole, one top-five and two top-10 finishes. Clauson's Dodge blew its engine at Miami and he finished 34th, which secured the rookie title for Cassill, who was at Homestead in a different role.

"That's funny because I was spotting for David Green [at Homestead] and [had] one eye on David and one eye on Bryan all night," Cassill said. "But I was just kind of watching with one eye closed, just kind of cringing the whole time, especially when Bryan was in the top 10. He had a good racecar early on.

"You know, we really could have easily started and parked a car and gotten the rookie points, but we knew what races we had to run, and we did what we had to do. I'm glad that it turned out the way it did."

He said winning the title secured a childhood goal of his, no matter what the future holds.

"I've said before that it's something that Raybestos has been involved with for many years and something that as a child growing up, Raybestos Rookie of the Year was a phrase that I had known since I was a little kid," Cassill said. "So to be able to have a title like that is awesome, and hopefully it does catapult into a ride or something.

"Next year? The economy is tough right now and everybody is struggling. It's just tough right now. I think you'll probably even see the championship team struggling. We've seen that in the past."