Despite Points Hole, Todd Gilliland Taking Positives from Season Start
Credit: HAMPTON, GEORGIA - FEBRUARY 25: Todd Gilliland, driver of the #38 Georgia Peanuts Ford, pits during the NASCAR Cup Series Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway on February 25, 2024 in Hampton, Georgia. (Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images
While it may not be reflected in the NASCAR Cup Series standings, it has been a good start to the season for Front Row Motorsports driver Todd Gilliland.
After two races, Gilliland leads the series in laps led, and has already eclipsed his career total. But he finds himself 30th in the standings after finishing 34th at Daytona and 26th at Atlanta.
Gilliland is trying to take the positives out of the last two weeks and not dwell on where he is in the points.
“There’s definitely no hiding it. We are in a hole in points, but at the same time I think Joey Logano is right behind me. I think Keselowski is right there and those are guys that you know are gonna be up there and probably most likely in the playoffs by the end of the season. Obviously, it’s bigger for us as maybe a smaller team to rack up the points as quickly as you can because you never know when the opportunities are gonna stop coming up.
“Overall, I’m just trying to take the positives out of it. I think this is definitely the most I’ve ever raced around the sport’s best drivers for the last couple of weeks, and hopefully I have a long career ahead of us. Obviously, we need to get points right now, but any of these high spots are obviously gonna help me moving forward also.”
In just his third season in the Cup Series, Gilliland has had limited opportunities to run at the front of the field. But after the past two weeks, his confidence running against the sport’s best has grown.
“It’s super exciting for me. As still a younger-ish guy that is still trying to find my way and make a name for myself, racing against the best of the best is just a huge confidence booster for myself. Obviously, I think I can do it and expect myself to be able to run well in those positions, but you never know what the other guys or the industry is gonna think of yourself when you’re up there, so, for me, it’s been really awesome and just have to put those experiences in the memory bank.
“This is a huge confidence sport. Like when we unload at Vegas, I’m gonna need to be very confident in my car to go almost wide-open around that place from lap one, so it definitely carries over and even if it’s not so much as the on-track results, I think even if it’s our race team we have mostly new mechanics, new car chief.
“I really think the expectation of our team this year, even if it’s through the first two races, we’ve seen the potential of what we can do at these type of racetracks and that needs to be the expectation going forward. It’s confidence inducing for me as well as my whole team.”
Credit: DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA - FEBRUARY 14: Todd Gilliland, driver of the #38 gener8tor Ford, poses for a photo on the grid during qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway on February 14, 2024 in Daytona Beach, Florida. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
Both Gilliland and teammate, Michael McDowell, have shown speed this season. Is that a function of the first two races being at super-speedways, or is it a sign of things to come now that the team has Tier 1 status with Ford and a technical alliance with Team Penske?
“I think it’s probably a little bit of both. I think we have a lot of new exciting partnerships, whether it’s the Tier 1 program with Ford or our new alliance with Team Penske, I think all of that stuff has been helping us, pointing our team in the right direction to make these decisions, but at the same time I think it’s even past the speed of it.
“It’s the speed plus how good my car drove, even at Daytona. Taking pushes, I could lead a line and all of that stuff, whereas before I’ve been up in the mix but the cars I’ve had the last couple of weeks have just had a different feeling of having the potential speed-wise, but also handling-wise, whereas before we would have had to pick one or the other. Let’s say we wanted to go qualify really well at Atlanta, we would probably have had to give up quite a bit of handling, so, to me, there’s more layers to it.
“I’m hopeful that we’re gonna show more speed at Vegas, but on the same foot I think we finished 28th and 31st there last year, so we have tons to improve on, but I’m really excited and very hopeful that this weekend will at least be a couple of steps in the right direction.”
After two super-speedway races to start the year, Gilliland says he’s curious about how the team will stack up this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, the first intermediate-sized track on the schedule.
“I am very curious about everything. I think there’s tons of stuff that is very unknown, whether it’s the other manufacturer’s body. Obviously, the Dark Horse Mustang has been super fast the first couple of weeks, so I feel confident about where we’re at, but it’s just about where we stack up with everybody else. I think that goes for everyone in the field, honestly. Everyone feels good about where they’re at, so we’ll see.
“From our side, the team side, I’m excited to see where our preparation is at, where we unload and our potential speed is at. There’s lots of unknowns. Even our pit crew. It’s been kind of easy the first couple weeks as far as a lot of fuel only, a lot of two tires, where this is really gonna be something that separates the field also is pit crews going from here on out, so there’s tons of different layers that are gonna be exposed, so I’m just excited to see where it all kind of stacks up.”
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