Todd Gilliland wrapped up his previous season in P22, pocketing four top-10s and fifteen top-20 finishes. This season, though, across 33 starts so far, the 25-year-old has brought home three top-10s and eleven top-20s. And while the numbers barely move the needle compared to last year, Gilliland believes the 2025 run didn’t turn the corner but instead slid backward.
Advertisement
Before the Talladega race, Gilliland sized himself up against his early-season form, saying, “First off, compared to last year, I think we’ve had just more bad luck. Less speed, probably, is a fair statement, and just less consistency.”
“Because the biggest thing last year, over the summer stretch, we had quite a bit of really consistent runs, kind of top 15 or top 20, like eight weeks in a row or something. Which, for us, is mediocre runs. And you say, ‘We want more,’ but that being our kind of baseline was really good last year.”
This time around, he noted, the #34 team came out of the gates swinging. They turned heads with reliable runs at Daytona International Speedway, Circuit of the Americas (COTA), and EchoPark Speedway (Atlanta), where he finished P27, P10, and P15, respectively. Everything looked up on track, but once May and June rolled in, the team’s momentum hit a wall.
At Pocono Raceway, damage left him limping to P28, and an early wreck at Chicago dropped him to P38. From there, it was six straight weeks of hard knocks, races where nothing seemed to click, and poor finishes dug them into a deeper hole. Climbing back out, he said, has felt like pushing a boulder uphill.
Still, the #34 Front Row Motorsports crew is putting their shoulders to the wheel, searching for the extra speed they need to compete toe-to-toe on race weekends.
In the midst of a tumultuous season, Gilliland also admitted he’s counting the days until the off-season, saying, “Yeah, man, it’s been a tough stretch. Twenty-seven races, I think? The longest in NASCAR history.”
“So, I think everybody is, right? Because driving the car and getting home, like Mondays, I have pretty much just kind of recoup and get ready, wherein my team and our truck drivers and everybody else, is working almost every day during the week, and then we go racing.”
He continued, “Man, it’s more than a full-time job. I’m more excited for these guys to be able to take a break. I am still excited to just relax a little bit, take my mind off it. It’s still a grind if it’s just going back-to-back-to-back.”
At present, the FRM driver sits 30th in the standings with 526 points, averaging a 21.6 finish and a 25.5 start. Across his 33 starts, he has led 12 laps in total, modest numbers for a driver still fighting tooth and nail to make his mark.