David Gilliland on his big break and his son's rising career
In our latest installment of our Making the Driver series, we feature David Gilliland, who spent over nine years in the Cup Series and attempted the 2016 Daytona 500 for Front Row Racing.
While Gilliland doesn't currently have a full-time ride in NASCAR, we thought he'd be a good subject given the way his career rose to prominence and how his son Todd is on the path to becoming a name known by many NASCAR fans. So we asked Gilliland earlier this spring about the big break he got winning that 2006 Xfinity Series race in Kentucky and helping manage the career of a 15-year-old driving prodigy.
Gilliland got his start in the K&N Pro Series West. His dad, Butch, was a champion of the series and Gilliland made his first official starts start-and-parking while also crew chiefing for his father.
He won his first West Series race in 2004 at Mesa Marin Speedway and finished third in the standings that season. The win at Mesa Marin started the process of joining forces with car owner Clay Andrews.
DG: He had a kid driving for him and they went to Mesa Marin and they were really fast. They ended up finishing the race and Clay was just getting in to the K&N Series and I was with a team that was obviously, we had won multiple races that year, but I was always trying to move up and try and better myself, move up the ladder and get that next opportunity. And Clay came by and we ended up winning the K&N race at Mesa Marin and they were there racing and he called me the next day after that race and I wasn’t sure of my plans for the next year. He said he wanted to run K&N Series and possibly some Xfinity races and so we got to talking and the rest is kind of history.
Gilliland finished fourth in the West Series in 2005 and also made his Xfinity Series debut. He and Andrews focused on the Xfinity Series in 2006 and Kentucky was his fifth start of the season. He qualified fourth and led 11 laps, beating Joe Gibbs Racing's J.J. Yeley to the finish.
The win by a part-time driver for an independent team (crew chiefed by former Sprint Cup Series crew chief Bill Wilburn), was an improbable one. It looks more and more improbable today given the way that Cup drivers and teams are dominating the Xfinity Series.
DG: When we won at Kentucky they were saying the same thing [about Cup drivers]. They were calling them Buschwhackers, they didn’t think a regular stand-alone team could go out and win. At the time I was working my guts out, helped start that team. I moved from California to North Carolina. I had won multiple races before that and I was working hard because I felt we could win. And when we did win I was kind of like ‘Man, why is everyone making a big deal out of this, we’ve been working 14, 16 hours a day for the last four months, what do people think we’ve been working for?’
I felt all along that we could do it. But now looking back at it, obviously it’s been 10 years and it was a much bigger accomplishment than I felt like it was at the time. Just because looking back, when you’re in the trenches sometime you can’t get a good clear, clean picture of what you’re really up against.
FTM: What was your biggest memory from that race?
DG: Probably the biggest memory is after the race, [former Cup driver] Jerry Nadeau had been helping me, kind of coaching me a little bit. He had been to a lot of the tracks I hadn’t been to. In victory lane I remember him telling me 'Hey man, your life has changed forever tonight.’ And I thought ‘I’ve spent my whole career waiting for something to happen. … I’d been racing for close to 10 years and we’d been so close so many times and I just didn’t feel like that was going to do anything. I didn’t feel like it was going to do anything differently than any of the other wins I had had.
Gilliland quickly learned the win would change a lot of things. His phone blew up with phone calls and the first was from Richard Childress. He ended up moving to Yates Racing and making his first start in the No. 38 car at Michigan just over two months later. The seat at Yates had opened up because Elliott Sadler made an in-season move to Ray Evernham's team. His dream of a full-time ride in the Cup Series had quickly been realized. Does he ever wonder whatever would have happened without winning that race?
DG: You can go back and look at everything. The Kentucky race probably wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t have won a K&N race at Phoenix. That wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t have won a big race … I built my first dirt car out of a single car garage when my wife and I got married in an 800 square foot house. ... There’s so many things you look back on and the opportunities that people have given me along the way. None of it would have been possible without any of those people giving me opportunities along the way and I’m very grateful and thankful for that.
After parting ways with Yates following the 2008 season, Gilliland drove a season for TRG Motorsports before joining Front Row Racing for six seasons. Now, he's helping Todd navigate his first full season in the K&N West Series. Todd Gilliland has won all three of his K&N West Series starts and won his first start in the East Series (at New Smyrna in February), becoming the first driver to win his first four career K&N Series starts since Dan Gurney. The streak ended at four when Todd finished ninth at Bristol on Saturday in the East Series race.
David said Todd's first time in a late model was at 12 years old after running quarter midgets. By the end of his first test session he was running incredibly quick lap times -- times as fast as David had run.
DG: I was pretty surprised, actually. When we went, he’s like ‘Dad what are we going to work on today?’ And I’m like ‘Well you’re going to work on learning to drive a car that you’re offset in.’ Everything he had ever driven he was in the center of the car. Open wheel.
The biggest thing I need to remind myself on a daily basis is that he’s just still 15 years old. It’s hard. You go race with him and how he acts, and how he presents himself and how he drives and his maturity level is much beyond 15 years old and definitely not what I was doing at 15 years old.
Todd's proficiency has also changed David's way of thinking about how drivers should work their way up the racing ladder.
DG: When I worked my way up, I built my own race cars, I had a business working and building cars for other people. That’s what helped make me successful and that’s what helped make me a better driver was understanding the cars. Which definitely helped my dad too. So the whole time that’s what I thought how you do it. And then being in the Cup Series and seeing guys like Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney and the future stars and current stars of the Cup Series come along and even Jimmie Johnson, he raced off-road trucks, right … kind of made me rethink my thinking on what it takes to be a successful racer.
With my son Todd, he started racing at a young age and he just gets it. He has something that I don’t have and never did have. He just gets it. He’s a good racer. He’s smart, he’s fast. And so it’s kind of helped me to shift gears and think well maybe he still works on the cars and helps us but I know it’s not a necessity to be in the Cup Series where he wants to go.
And Todd, who turns 16 in May, will soon be eligible to run in the Camping World Truck Series on a limited basis.
DG: My ultimate goal right now is – with him being at 16 years old you can run truck races, the short track truck races. What I’ve been thinking about going to work on right now is trying to put a truck deal together to maybe share that ride with him next year and run the bigger tracks like Joe [Nemechek] did with John Hunter Nemechek. I think that would be a lot of fun and to race with him and obviously race against him would be a lot of fun. We raced against each other, my dad myself and Todd all raced against each other two years ago at Irwindale Speedway in a super late model race. That was really special, probably one of the best memories I’ve probably had at the race track.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
