NASCAR WCUP: Chad Little Settles in for '99
23 February 1999
Chad Little's first full year as a member of Roush Racing proved to be a success as he registered a career-best 15th-place finish in the 1998 NASCAR Winston Cup standings.
He served notice early on in the season that the No. 97 John Deere Taurus was going to be a factor. It started with a seventh-place finish in the Daytona 500 and continued with a 10th-place effort two weeks later at Las Vegas. The only bump in the road came in week four when he failed to qualify at Atlanta. Despite missing that race, Little bounced back with a 17-place showing at Darlington and a career-best second-place run a couple of events later at Texas. From there he had a solid sixth-place effort at California and then strung together back-to-back eighth-place finishes late in the year at Charlotte and Talladega.
The 1998 season represented a resurgence of sorts for Little on the NASCAR Winston Cup level. His 32 races was the most he had run in one season since 1991 when he competed in 28 events. He drove in six races for Cale Yarborough and 13 for Harry Melling in 1992, but after that much of his success came in the Busch Grand National Series.
In 1994, Little finished third in the Busch Series point standings with 10 top-five finishes and 14 top 10s. He was even better in '95 as he won a season-high six races, but ended up second to Johnny Benson in the championship battle. The 1996 campaign once again saw display great consistency as he finished fifth in the points race while getting back into Winston Cup on a limited basis. From 1993-95, Little competed in a total of six Winston Cup events, but in '96 he started nine races -- six for Rypien and three for Gary Bechtel. That led to him joining forces with Rypien for the 1997 season, and, eventually, his association with Roush.
Little started making name for himself racing in his native Washington and got noticed for the first time when he won the Spokane Late Model championship in 1981. While earning a marketing degree from Washington State University and a law degree from Gonzaga, Little continued to race. He branched out into the Winston West Series, where he won rookie of the year honors in 1986 and captured the overall championship one year later.
He made his NASCAR Winston Cup debut in 1986, competing in two events, but didn't hit the circuit full-time until 1990 when he took the green flag for 18 races.
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