The first 10 races of Todd Gilliland’s NASCAR Cup career are in the books.
For the Front Motorsports rookie, the first third of the 2021 schedule has seen him finish no better than 16th (Circuit of the Americas) while racking up three DNFs (Daytona, Atlanta, Talladega).
While it may have been relatively quiet and uneventful from the outside looking in, the last three months have been a “whirlwind” for the 21-year-old driver.
“It’s just it’s just been a lot of racing,” Gilliland told SPEED SPORT last weekend at Talladega Superspeedway. “It’s no problem. It’s a lot more than I expected. You’re just so busy. Sundays bleed into Mondays and Tuesdays and Thursdays again, you leave (for the next race).”
Ten straight weeks of racing, preceded by the Clash at the Coliseum, is a far different pace than what Gilliland was used to.
During his three full-time seasons in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, Gilliland enjoyed a relatively less crowded 23-race schedule. That saw him racing as little as five times in February and March and then not at all in April.
This year, the Cup Series will have only one off week.
“That was probably the biggest thing after Daytona for me,” Gilliland said. “This year, you’re going straight to the West Coast swing and those are the toughest races. But in trucks, we go to Daytona, you focus on that and it seems like you got a couple weeks usually to refocus on the real season where you go back racing at mile-and-a-halfs. So I think that’s the biggest difference for sure. But I think overall, the rookie years has been going well.”
Gilliland said the learning process has been “awesome” given the much more consistent schedule.
“I think it’s along the same lines of the Truck Series, you maybe make a mistake one weekend and then you don’t have a chance to learn from it or put it into the work for another two weeks,” Gilliland said. “Where in the Cup Series you’re going racing again the very next week. So I think you could just learn and develop so much faster in the Cup Series just because you’re racing so much more.”
While most of the tracks the Cup Series has been to so far are some that Gilliland has raced at, there are exceptions like Auto Club Speedway.
Gilliland said the weekend at the 2-mile speedway was the “toughest weekend I’ve had in a long time.
“You take for granted that you know the tracks and you only have to learn the car. I think that was the toughest one for me, but also I just have so much fun learning new stuff. Fontana, for example, was really fun by the end of the race. But learning the Next Gen car in general is really tough. But I’m lucky to be learning it at the same time as my team.”
One of the few on-track highlights from Gilliland came in the night race at Martinsville Speedway.
While he finished 30th after bringing out a late caution, Gilliland raised some eyebrows when Fox’s cameras caught him performing a bump-and-run on Denny Hamlin.
That resulted in friends blowing up his phone with excited messages.
“I was so surprised,” Gilliland said. “As soon as I got to my phone after the race it was like, ‘Dude, you’re on TV.’ They showed me moving Denny Hamlin for like 25th or something. I’m like, ‘Why they’d have to show that on TV?’ But it’s just that’s another crazy part to me, man. You’re racing in 20th place and you’re racing really good cars. That’s the Cup Series and I think that’s something that is so overlooked.
“But as a rookie, it’s really cool. I literally raced around Denny Hamlin all night long. I moved him, 50 laps later he moved me back right in front of the leaders. That’s just racing and … these guys are the best in the business and just to learn from those guys, race around them, is awesome.”
Keyword: Todd Gilliland’s Rookie Year Has Been ‘Whirlwind’