A couple of things were in focus after the NASCAR Cup Series race at Darlington last Sunday – Brad Keselowski’s win and the altercation between Chris Buescher and Tyler Reddick. However, among it all, a special performance was lost which Denny Hamlin brought to the forefront on a recent episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast. That special performance belonged to Todd Gilliland who finished in an incredible P15.
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The reason why it’s incredible is because the 23-year-old was not helped by his team at all in the race. Front Row Motorsports dropped the ball several times on pit road and it mightily affected his finishing position. Had the stops been better, we might have seen the #38 car finish in the top 10 ahead of some big names. Regardless, it was still a performance that caught Hamlin’s eye and he gave the young racer a well-deserved shoutout.
“I don’t know where he finished but he had legit top-five speed and never got to show it because they kept losing spots on pit road,” the Joe Gibbs Racing driver said. “Big injustice but that’s just part of it. Like I mean it’s hard for everyone to have a great pit crew but I thought just off of speed, Todd Gilliland did an amazing job, he’s been doing an amazing job so you wanna give him props.”
Front Row Motorsports is not the most competitive team but Gilliland has been making good use of the opportunity he has in his hand. That’s exactly what you see in a high-quality race car driver,
Todd Gilliland has been shining in the last few weeks
The season did not start in the best way possible for the 23-year-old but he has turned it around quite well. In the last 4 races, he has three top 15 and one top 10 finish. That one in the top 10 came at the Talladega Superspeedway. Then he finished P14 in Kansas and like Hamlin said, perhaps would have made it into the top five at Darlington had it not been for his pit crew’s errors.
The young driver has been honoring his roots of late with a throwback paint scheme which is a tribute to the 2015 CARS Tour Lata Model series which he won driving for David Gilliland’s team. It was a classy touch that impressed his crew chief who said that Todd was “honoring his roots and not forgetting where he came from” as per Speedway Digest.
Moving forward, he needs to be helped by his pit crew if he wants to finish in the top 10 more often. There has been a lot of consistency in his racing of late and his team needs to back it up now.
