All that’s left for Todd Gilliland to do is just win the dang Daytona 500 and everything else will take care of itself.
Okay, it’s not quite that dire nor that simple, but winning the biggest race of the year would solve several emerging issues for the second-generation Cup Series racer at Front Row Motorsports. Gilliland found out over the winter that his full-time schedule would be scaled down to 30 races to make room for Truck Series champion Zane Smith and his five-race campaign.
Smith will enter the 500 with his Truck Series crew but will occupy the car Gilliland drives for the other five. That leaves Gilliland without a seat for those other five starts and seeking the funding to jump in another car during those weekends.
But, if he wins the Daytona and becomes playoff eligible, maybe that changes the calculus in some way.
“I don’t know if it would be easier for me or harder for the team, but my plan is definitely to go down there and win the Daytona 500,” Gilliland said during a Wednesday press conference. “I’ve told my team we’re speaking it into existence over here at Front Row Motorsports. That’s my plan.”
It’s the best-case scenario for Gilliland because the only two wins at the Cup level for Front Row has come at Talladega (2013, David Ragan with a push from David Gilliland) and the 2021 Daytona 500 with Michael McDowell.
Gilliland took his lumps as a rookie last year, made even more complicated by the debut of a new and radically different racing platform, with a 23.2 average finish and 28th place championship finish.
“In hindsight, there were definitely more variables than I expected,” Gilliland said. “Going in, I was super positive because we’re all going into a level playing field, an equal platform, learning the car at the same time.
“But the thing is, the team is also learning the cars. The first few laps every week, it was different than previous years because the teams had a good idea of where the splitter should be and heights, and this (past) year it was an unknown. I’m still very grateful to have done it in the first year. At the same time, the challenging part was learning it with the team and trying to get up to speed sometimes.”
And to that point, Gilliland was hoping to have had another full season with the chance to show progress. And he still can, but it does feel as though Smith is being groomed to take over for Gilliland in 2024.
Which could make the…
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