Todd Gilliland: ‘It’s Nice To Get On The Right Track’

A.J. Allmendinger (16) fends off Todd Gilliland Sunday at Martinsville Speedway. (Jacob Seelman/Race Face Digital photo)

MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Todd Gilliland netted his second career Martinsville Speedway top 10, matching his previous-best result with a 10th-place run in Sunday’s Cook Out 400.

While Front Row Motorsports teammates Noah Gragson and Zane Smith each found misfortune, being collected in two separate incidents during the race, Gilliland kept his nose about as clean as one can keep it at the half-mile ‘paper clip’ and reaped the rewards as a result.

Gilliland’s second top 10 of the NASCAR Cup Series season lifted him two positions in the regular season standings to 21st, and he sits just 34 points back of the playoff cut line through seven races.

“I felt like my team did a really good job. We didn’t make any mistakes all day and capitalized on others’ mistakes, where we could just kind of chip away at it and make our way forward,” Gilliland said. “We struggled with our balance a little bit and just overall grip, and then that last run my guys did a really good job getting our car a lot better and I was able to pick off one or two guys on all those restarts and then kind of settle in there in ninth.

“It was tougher to pass once you started getting to go, but I was happy with it. We managed our stuff well and managed our whole race well.”

After scoring a top 10 at Circuit of the Americas, Gilliland hit a rough stretch of races at Arizona’s Phoenix Raceway, Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway, and Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway, finishing 17th, 29th, and 30th, respectively.

Now at a short track that he’ll revisit again in the fall, Gilliland hopes he’s got his fourth full-time Cup Series campaign back on course.

“It’s nice to get on the right track after the last couple of weeks we’ve had,” a refreshed Gilliland said. “I wrecked our car at Vegas and finished 30th, and then last week we ran 30th pretty much all day, so I’m just super proud of my guys. We knew this was going to be a good [track] for us, and I always feel super confident in myself when we come to Martinsville, so we did a good job of executing all week.

“My pit crew did a really good job because they kept us in the game all day. It was a full team effort.”

Gilliland looks to keep the uptick of momentum going into next weekend’s Goodyear 400 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.

Coverage of NASCAR’s official throwback weekend begins Sunday, April 6 at 3 p.m. ET on FS1, the Motor Racing Newtwork, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90, with in-car cameras streaming exclusively on MAX.