Can you imagine winning a race and then proceeding to tell your boss, “stay in your f*****g motorhome“? Tough right? Now, add the fact that the boss in the subject is Kyle Busch. Seems almost unbelievable. Who in their right mind would tell someone like Busch something like that? But Todd Gilliland did just that. And yes, he wasn’t in his right mind.
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Gilliland, who was driving for Kyle Busch Motorsports in 2019, won his career’s first race at Martinsville, having failed to qualify for the playoffs in the previous two campaigns. As a result, his emotions got a little better of him and the outburst that came out was directed at none other than his demanding boss.
Of course, he went on to clarify soon after that it was something that was said in the heat of the moment. But nearly 4 years from that radio message, Gilliland, now no longer a KBM driver, reflected on what he said with a bit more context.
Todd Gilliland revisits infamous radio message directed at Kyle Busch
Speaking in a recent episode of the Stacking Pennies podcast with Corey LaJoie, the Front Row Motorsports driver was asked about his thoughts on the infamous radio incident from Martinsville, which Gilliland claimed wasn’t his proudest moment.
“You wish you could have stuff back. But yeah, I mean, that’s just really frustrating, right? I feel like we came off the two K&N West Championships as a young kid, probably more confident than you should be. And honestly, I probably expected myself going to a good team that we could go out and win races and definitely compete much better than we did. So I was extremely frustrated,” he described.
“Honestly, at the end of 2019, when that was, I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I knew my deal with Toyota was probably coming to an end. Just overall frustration with probably myself, the whole situation. I was wishing that our trucks would be better and sometimes you don’t feel like you’re getting listened to.”
“I just feel kind of the normal racing frustrations that younger me definitely, let it get the best of me.”
What did Kyle Busch have to say about Gilliland’s radio message?
While the driver had clarified his message to be something said in the heat of the moment, the boss, Kyle Busch, decided to focus on the good side of the whole story, the win. Busch claimed he was proud of Gilliland’s effort and “it felt good” to see him take the checkered flag.
“Overall, being able to put it in victory lane is what matters most. It’s good that he was able to get that done, and finally be able to get to Victory Lane,” Busch claimed as per Autoweek.
Having said that, the two-time Cup champion, even though he refrained from focusing too much on the radio message, said he’ll just go with the fact that he has “never attacked the boss.”
