Good news, bad news, Todd Gilliland.
Your 447 laps led are tops in the NASCAR Cup Series this year
Two DNFs have you 30th in the championship standings
Front Row Motorsports has shown a lot of speed so far
The first two races are on drafting tracks
Gilliland has been the breakout contender from over the first two races this season, but the performance has come on tracks that only make up 16 percent of the schedule. For all intents and purposes, the season begins this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and it will be interesting to see if Gilliland continues running near the front half of the field.
The third-generation racer has a 22.8 average finish over his first two-plus seasons at the highest level but now he has both experience and a team that is on the upswing after inking a technical alliance with both Team Penske and Ford Performance.
So even if the first two positive development races came on superspeedways, there are a lot of reasons for Gilliland to feel optimistic about the overall campaign ahead.
“I think it’s probably a little bit of both,” Gilliland said on Wednesday during a media teleconference. “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, 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.”
Improvements for Todd Gilliland
Gilliland also says he just feels aerodynamic speed and balance, even at Daytona and Atlanta, that hasn’t been there over the previous two years.
“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 after qualifying near the front and leading laps the past two weeks.
“I’m hopeful that we’re going to show more speed here at 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.”
Regardless of the circumstances, Gilliland is still just 23 years old, and has spent the past two weeks mixing it up amongst top guys like Kyle Larson, William Byron, Brad Keselowski, Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano.
That wasn’t even happening on superspeedways the past two years so that is a legitimate development.
“It’s super exciting for me,” Gilliland said. “As a still younger-ish 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.
“I think I can do it and expect myself 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 you when you’re up there, so, for me, it’s been really awesome and just have to put those experiences in the memory bank.”
How confidence is helping Todd Gilliland
Gilliland said confidence means a lot in this sport and that the past two weeks have embolden him to be more aggressive.
“Like when we unload at Vegas, I’m going to need to be very confident in my car to go almost wide-open around that place from lap one, so it definitely carries over and even if it’s not so much as the on-track results,” Gilliland said “I think even if it’s our race team we have mostly new mechanics, new car chief.
“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 type of racetracks and that needs to be the expectation going forward. It’s confidence-inducing for me as well as my whole team.”
Gilliland was thrown into figurative hot water from the start of his career, as he was a 21-year-old elevated straight to the Cup Series from Trucks, mostly because it was also the start of the NextGen era where everyone started over with the new car.
So while he has taken his fair share of lessons over the past two seasons, they have also made him more prepared for a team that has an influx of resources and expectations.
“Back then, I didn’t even know what to prepare for and then me being a rookie and then now three years in I definitely as a whole that our race team and myself know what is important, maybe what’s not so important and all that stuff,” he said. “But from a race team side of it, you prepare the same and my race cars have just been much faster the last couple weeks, and it’s been really nice to prepare and be able to take semi-advantage of the situations.
“We’ve been up front, so that’s the biggest thing, and just confidence.”
But again, the season begins in earnest this weekend at Las Vegas as Gilliland gets to see where he, his team and the new Ford body style, the Mustang Dark Horse, stacks up in a non-drafting track environment.
“I am very curious about everything,” said Gilliland. “I think there’s tons of stuff that is very unknown, whether it’s the other manufacturer’s bodies. Obviously, the Dark Horse Mustang has been super fast the first couple of weeks, so I feel confident about where we’re at, but it’s just about where we stack up with everybody else. I think that goes for everyone in the field, honestly.
“Everyone feels good about where they’re at, so we’ll see.
“From our side, the team side, I’m excited to see where our preparation is at, where we unload and our potential speed is at. There’s lots of unknowns. Even our pit crew. It’s been kind of easy the first couple weeks as far as a lot of fuel only, a lot of two tires, where this is really going to be something that separates the field also is pit crews going from here on out, so there’s tons of different layers that are going to be exposed, so I’m just excited to see where it all kind of stacks up.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.