INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Todd Gilliland reached the final round of NASCAR’s second In-Season Challenge by taking advantage of all the right breaks. Daniel Suarez suffered an early tire problem in Round 1 at Sonoma and finished 31st. Carson Hocevar crashed early at Chicago in Round 2.
Alex Bowman finished two laps behind the leaders at Atlanta in Round 3, then made a pit lane mistake at North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, that helped eliminate Chase Elliott and put Gilliland in Sunday’s finale at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. So, naturally, the self-described underdog persevered again. He sifted his way through traffic, avoided trouble and took advantage of Ryan Blaney’s late crash to collect the $1 million prize, earning the right to suddenly be called a champion.
“It was a tough day for us to be honest with you,” he said after finishing 24th, two spots ahead of Blaney to claim the title. “But I thought that was kind of our whole M.O. We were just barely scraping by and even today, it definitely took a little bit of bad luck clearly from the (No.) 12 (Blaney).” While most NASCAR fans were watching Corey Heim speed past team co-owner Denny Hamlin on a late restart and into history with his first Brickyard 400 victory, Gilliland and Blaney continued to battle for the race inside the race with Gilliland seemingly one of the most unlikely winners in the challenge’s field.
The 26-year-old driver from Front Row Motorsports began the five-round, single-elimination tournament seeded 25th and a resume that appeared less than daunting. In five Cup seasons, he has never won a race or a pole and he has produced just 17 top-10 finishes in 164 career starts. So winning seemed almost unfathomable.
“We’ve caught a lot of lucky breaks. We’ve barely been skating by all these rounds,” Gilliland said Friday. “But now that we’re here, yeah, it feels a bit more real and you never know, right?
Four hundred miles, anything can happen. So we’re just going to go give our best effort and try not to think about what it would be like if we won.” The weekend sure didn’t start well for Gilliland, who qualified 36th — 23 spots behind Blaney. And aside from a pit cycle that helped him finish second in Sunday’s second stage, Gilliland always seemed to be in Blaney’s rearview mirror, until destiny intervened with 41 laps to go.
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