FORT WORTH, Texas – Last fall, Todd Gilliland was on his way to his first NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series victory at Texas Motor Speedway before coming up a gallon of fuel short on the final lap.
However, Gilliland has returned to the 1.5-mile quad-oval refreshed, re-motivated and ready to make some new memories during Friday night’s Vankor 350, as he continues to chase that breakthrough win.
The 19-year-old Gilliland, who enters Texas ninth in Truck Series points on the strength of two top-10 finishes in the first four races, is using the heartbreak he endured in November as motivation to perform this weekend.
“I’m excited. I love this track. We ran really well here both times last year,” said Gilliland. “We haven’t been where we want to be today or yesterday, but we changed a ton overnight. Obviously, we have really good notes, really great teammates and we were decent yesterday. We’ll see. I think that’s one thing I feel confident about is I can remember the feel I needed last year.
“In practice, we probably could have been a seventh or eighth place truck, but that’s not what we want,” he noted. “Our whole team is looking for better than that, so I’m really proud of everyone for taking that step and kind of going out on the edge, changing everything and hoping for a better result than we had before.”
In his most-recent appearance at Texas Motor Speedway, Gilliland led a race-high 60 laps before his engine sputtered going down the backstretch on the final circuit. After that, Gilliland could only watch helplessly as Justin Haley streaked by en route to a win and a guaranteed berth in the Championship 4.
Despite the pain of coming up short that night, Gilliland quickly put that race out of his mind.
“It didn’t take me too long,” said Gilliland of letting go of last year’s near-miss. “I feel like I always take a lot of positives out of stuff. Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes that’s a bad thing. I try and get rid of the negative stuff so fast (that) I don’t have time to work on it or I don’t even give myself the opportunity to. I think for a while I put it right behind me, but over the off-season it kind of came back and we were looking at everything.
“Even yesterday my crew chief, Marcus Richmond, brought that up because that weekend we felt really good about my truck and then in qualifying I wrecked. There’s good and bads,” Gilliland added. “It’s kind of how we unloaded here yesterday but we said there’s obviously something that could have been better. You should never be on the edge of wrecking to get the pole. It should be easier than that.
“I think we’re all on the same page at the right time.”
Even though he hasn’t necessarily had the results he wants so far this season, Gilliland hasn’t lost faith in his team.
“I feel like it could be high. I feel like it’s about a lot of the attitude of my team and just how the weekend goes up to that point,” noted Gilliland of his confidence level. “If we start the race and we’re kind of not doing too good, then I feel like I let my confidence go up and down too much with stuff like that. I feel like with the success we’ve had in the past, I need to be more confident and more of a leader.
“When every else’s confidence is down, it’s my time to be up and really just lift everyone back up.”
With all of that said, Gilliland has one – and only one – goal in mind on Friday night.
“We’re going to go win this thing,” he said. “Obviously, I think you’ve got to be smart at the same time. I’ve obviously made a lot of mistakes about that trying to get too much out of my truck at not the right time. I feel like I’ve got smarter about that and still having a little bit extra to push at the end.
“It seems like I always go 100 percent the whole race, and then the good guys turn it up to 110 percent and drive right around you; it’s just different intensity levels. We’re excited, though.”