Todd Gilliland believes the speed his Front Row Motorsports team has shown the first few weeks of the NASCAR season is a sign of things to come regardless of the racetrack.
“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,” Gilliland said this week. “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.”
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Gilliland not only led laps but could put his No. 38 Ford in front of different lanes and take pushes in the Daytona 500. He led 16 laps but finished 35th after being involved in the lap 191 multi-car crash.
A week later, Gilliland started a career-best fourth at Atlanta Motor Speedway and was the class of the field. Gilliland led a race-high 58 laps. Again, however, the finish (26th place) did not indicate the team’s performance and speed, as Gilliland was caught in an incident that damaged the car.
In the past, Gilliland’s team had to pick between either having a car that drove well or had speed. In the first two weeks of the 2024 season, the No. 38 Ford Mustang Dark Horse has had both.
“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,” Gilliland said. “I’m hopeful that we’re going to show more speed here at (Las) 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.”
The speed, specifically, is “like I’ve never had before in the Cup Series,” said Gilliland. With 74 laps led through the first two weeks, Gilliland has already set a new single-season mark for himself. He didn’t lead a single lap in 2023.
Gilliland and teammate Michael McDowell ran at the front in the Daytona 500 and Atlanta. For the 23-year-old Gilliland, now in his third year as a Cup Series driver, running at the front with some of the best in the series has been “awesome.”
“As still a youngerish 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,” Gilliland said. “I think I can do it and expect to be able to run well in those positions, but you never know what the other guys or the industry is going to think of yourself when you’re up there.
“So, for me, it’s been really awesome, just have to put those experiences in the memory bank. This is a huge confidence sport.”
The 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway is the season’s first intermediate racetrack, making it the first chance for Cup Series teams to get an idea of where they stack up. Will Gilliland and the Fords be just as fast when not on a superspeedway? Gilliland will need to draw on all the confidence he has in his car and team to hold it nearly wide-open right from the start of the race.
“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 types of racetracks, and that needs to be the expectation going forward,” Gilliland said. “It’s confidence-inducing for me as well as my whole team.”