Team will now be called Hillman Smith Motorsports
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Hillman Racing has undergone some rebranding with the addition of West Coast businessman Gordon Smith as the co-owner of the team with Mike Hillman. The team is now known as Hillman Smith Motorsports.
The addition of Smith as a co-owner has allowed the organization to expand this offseason as they have secured additional Richard Childress Racing race cars, Earnhardt Childress Racing engines for the full 2015 Sprint Cup Series schedule as well as the addition of an in-house, on-site engineering group.
Smith began his involvement with the organization at the start of the 2014 season.
“Adding Gordon Smith as a partner to the racing organization will only strengthen the foundation we have built over the past three years,” Hillman said in a release provided by the team. “From finishing 12th in last year’s Daytona 500 to our best finish of fourth last fall at Talladega with Landon behind the wheel, we have seen great results with limited resources. Gordon has shown a passion for the sport and demonstrated a loyalty to our employees that convinced me elevating him to an equity stakeholder will allow us to take the next step in the Sprint Cup arena.”
The team will continue to field the No. 40 Chevrolet SS for Landon Cassill out of its Mooresville, North Carolina, shop. The 25-year-old made 34 starts last season in the No. 40 with his best result being a fourth-place finish at Talladega. The result was Cassill’s first career top-five finish in the Sprint Cup Series.
“This partnership is the culmination of a relationship that started with Landon a few years back,” Smith said in a team release. “Landon was driving for Mike Hillman in the Cup Series, so we were introduced and I was immediately welcomed into the fold. I believe the intimate feeling of the organization not only attracts sponsors to the team, but I’ve watched over the past year as the involvement of each sponsor has grown. Mike Hillman has established a great team that not only puts a good product on the race track, but makes every event an experience that brings people back to the track. I’m looking forward to being involved in the operation and adding to it.”