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Todd Gilliland won’t go so far as to say his NASCAR Cup Series season had a silver lining, but he can admit it certainly changed him.
It was an unconventional season for Gilliland. Set to run another full season with Front Row Motorsports in the No. 38 Ford Mustang, it was revealed before the season-opening Daytona 500 that Zane Smith was going to get a slate of races in the car. Not wanting to be sidelined, Gilliland was left to patch together the season.
Gilliland ran 30 races in his car. Front Row put him in the No. 36 Ford Mustang, its part-time, unchartered car, for the spring Talladega Superspeedway race. Rick Ware fielded Gilliland in the other five races.
Despite the adversity and disruption, Gilliland never complained or sought pity. When all was said and done, it resulted in a career year.
“I don’t know if it was motivation, necessarily,” Gilliland tells RACER. “I feel like I’m going to drive the car as fast as I can and work as hard as I can, but there’s so much more to being a good human being and learning life along the way. This has been a really good point of that.
“Working with two different (organizations) is not a fun thing, but I feel like I’ve learned so much going back and forth. It’s definitely forced me to be more responsible. I’ve talked to more people. Even keeping track of all my stuff – getting the right flights. I know it’s all dumb stuff, but it’s made me a little more responsible and made me work a bit harder.”
The numbers can seem a bit deceiving because Gilliland finished 28th in the championship standings for the second straight year. However, his running position and speed throughout the races were markedly better, spending more time running inside the top 15 (1,479 laps) than he did in 2022 (1,027).
Gilliland ended the year with four top-10 finishes, two more than he earned in his rookie season. To go further, Gilliland’s average starting position and average finishing position also improved (25.8 and 22.0, respectively).
While it might have been two different organizations, Gilliland worked with four different teams. Aside from the group of guys on his No. 38 team that Gilliland is familiar with, there was the No. 36 team put together when Front Row runs the third car, plus he drove both the No. 15 and the No. 51 car in his time with Rick Ware Racing.
Fortunately, he sees working with so many different people as a young driver as a good thing.
“Just getting a bit different perspective of how people do things and their processes,” Gilliland says.
Going from rookie to sophomore in the Cup Series was already going to bring maturity and growth. Gilliland was more prepared to go racing and in his surroundings.
“I always forget how I was at the beginning of (2022),” Gilliland says. “My eyes were wide-open going into the Daytona 500. I did not know what to expect. I was racing against guys that I’d watched forever. And I think even that feeling of being comfortable walking into the driver’s meeting, sitting next to these guys that are superstars of the sport, and just feeling like you semi-belong. It’s not like I’m one of those guys, but having two years now, part of it is kind of self-confidence, but it’s hard to manufacture that. It’s having to go through the reps, a full season, traveling as much as we have, and getting used to all of that.
“It’s probably pretty crazy from the outside to see how much progress I’ve made, I guess, and just feeling comfortable in being around those guys. It’s one of the things that makes me laugh but also sticks out from last year.”