By Roy J. Akers-www.skyviewsports
Todd Gilliland, driver of the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Mustang Dark Horse, is coming off a 10th-place finish last Sunday at Martinsville Speedway. He answered questions from the media about last weekend and what lies ahead for Sunday’s race at Darlington Raceway.
TODD GILLILAND, No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford Mustang Dark Horse – HOW HAS IT BEEN HAVING ZANE AND NOAH AS TEAMMATES AND HOW HAVE THEY HELPED YOU? “It’s been a great time. That was the part I was sure of, that we were gonna have fun. Whether you’re running good or bad those guys are a lot of fun to hang out with. I’ve hung out with them for years now off the racetrack. I would say I’ve raced more with Noah along the way. We were teammates back in the Truck Series before, so I had more of an idea with him and Zane with his personality and to hang out with him it’s the same thing. He’s a lot of fun. He’s much different than Noah. Both of them have great personalities, but very different. I think the thing I’ve been most impressed with is all three of our abilities to focus and lock in when it’s time to do so. We had our competition meeting this morning and every Tuesday, and I think that’s the most important part when we can all focus and get to the bottom of racing ideas. The fun aspect is definitely gonna happen with all three of us together at any time.”
WE SAW A LOT OF TIRE FALL OFF LAST YEAR AT BRISTOL. WHAT ARE YOUR EXPECTATIONS IN A COUPLE OF WEEKS? “I don’t really know. I think it’ll still take a couple times to really trust what I think we’re gonna see going to Bristol. My gut tells me what we’ll see is more like the fall of last year when it was kind of back to normal. It was kind of the same tire all along and we kind of had this one outlier, so I would say percentagewise it’s probably more likely to be a lower fall off race where the track moves around and kind of opens up every lane a little bit more.”
WHAT’S IT BEEN LIKE WORKING WITH CHRIS LAWSON THIS YEAR? “I think that last part you mentioned is a big part of it – at the Cup level. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with him in the past. We kind of gone through spells. He was my late model crew chief from the time I was 13 years old all the way through the K&N Series with I was 17 years old. Then we had a couple years off and then he started the Truck Series program here at Front Row Motorsports with me again for two years, and then we were separated again for another three or four years. It’s great to have him back. It’s just really comforting and an exciting thing. In my opinion, I know that there’s never gonna be someone that works harder, puts more of their heart and soul into it, so, for me, that’s all you can ask for out of a team. I think we’ve got everyone banding together really well. You mentioned the rut, we’ve had a couple really bad runs coming into Martinsville. To be honest, Vegas, like I said, our car was really fast, but I just made a really dumb mistake and wrecked it, and then at Homestead we just ran really bad all day, so it was really nice to rebound. I think even though it’s early in the year, it’s really nice to see us trying to turn the page and get back up to a good note pretty quickly.”
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED IN THE XFINITY RACE LAST SATURDAY? “I think from my side of it, it was a tough one to watch. I think that’s for most people in the industry. It was not the prettiest sight. As a whole sport, I don’t think that’s what any of us want it built on. I think all of the answers are above my head, to be honest with you. I don’t know what the right thing to do is. For me at least, I’ve definitely made some dumb moves in my time. From the driver’s seat, all you can do is ask, ‘Why did I do that? What was my decision-making process that went so wrong?’ I think the biggest thing is just looking yourself in the mirror and figuring out at the least how to make yourself better. From the officiating side, I don’t really know what the right thing is. There’s a lot of people that are very opinionated on it, but I think the biggest thing is that’s not what anyone in the sport probably wanted to see.”
WHAT KIND OF SETUP ADJUSTMENTS HAVE YOU AND YOUR TEAM FOCUSED ON FOR DARLINGTON? “We’ve been working on that a lot today. We debriefed Martinsville and then immediately went into Darlington and thinking about what we had last year. I feel like Darlington was probably one of our better racetracks last year. We ran pretty well and I feel like long runs were really our specialty. It’s hard because you need a balance of short run and long run, especially at Darlington. You’re gonna see tons of green flag pit stops most likely, just lots of pit stops in general even if they’re under caution. It’s all a balance of having to fire off well, having long run speed. The balance that you need to make speed on new tires versus if you build really loose as the tires wear out you’re gonna be hanging on at the end of the run. There is tons of stuff to balance there. It’s more of an intermediate type racetrack, so you still need all the downforce and all the horsepower you can get as well. Darlington is a very tough place because it takes all aspects of the race car to be good to definitely run up front.”
AS A DRIVER WHO HAS EXPERIENCE, HOW DID YOU LEARN WHEN TO FIGHT BACK AND WHEN IT WAS OK TO LET SOMEBODY GO IN A SITUATION WITHOUT BEING VIEWED AS A PUSHOVER? “That’s a great question. I 100 percent think it’s ongoing and learning for me at least and probably everybody to be honest. I would say just to not wreck race cars and everything, that’s the smartest move is to just move on from it, but I just don’t think that’s the human side of it. That’s not the mental side of it. We see it in everything. If you have a little brother, he pushes you and then you push him back. Then he pushes you harder and eventually somebody goes too far and somebody ends up crying or something like that when you’re dealing with your family. To that extent on the racetrack, you don’t want to see guys getting hurt. You don’t want to see them being put in bad situations, so I don’t know. I think it’s always gonna be ongoing and, to me, there are so many ways to make racing hard on somebody else by not just wrecking them and, honestly, I feel like the 54 definitely feels like the 8 won and there are ways to maybe just take little bites out of it. You don’t need to just go wreck the guy. I think it’s almost more beneficial to use it to your advantage over a long period of time, but I feel like guys definitely have more of a reputation. If you get into them, they’re gonna get you back hard. Or, other guys where you might get one or two chances and not viewed as a pushover necessarily, but I think there are definitely different guys with different reputations of ways to get back.”
IS THERE A SITUATION THAT COMES TO MIND WHERE YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN JUSTIFIED TO MAKE IT HARD ON SOMEBODY, BUT YOU WERE KINDER AND GENTLER AND THAT PAID OFF IN THE LONG RUN? “I’m sure there is probably. I’ve been definitely really mad at guys in the past, and I think for me, at least, that’s always been my approach. If someone is mad at me, you try and give it back as much as you can. It’s all give and take in the long run and when they see someone wreck someone else, it’s a massive take. That’s never something you want to be on the bad side of but you have to just keep giving it back. For me, I’ve always been better off racing guys super hard that I feel like don’t deserve to be raced easy and to let go, and then eventually time heals everything and you eventually feel like you’re back even with guys and can start fresh. For me, it’s more of racing guys hard, not letting people go and stuff like that than just blatantly wrecking people. I feel like that hurts reputations over the long run.”
DO YOU LIKE TO TALK SOMEBODY IMMEDIATELY IF YOU HAVE AN ISSUE WITH ANOTHER DRIVER OR WAIT UNTIL MONDAY? “The way I look at it is I always try and wait until Monday. It’s kind of the theory of is it better to rip off a band-aid or slowly rip your arm hairs off with it. I don’t know. For me, I like to let guys cool off a little bit. Nobody in the race car is probably in their clearest head space when you get out or right when an incident happens. That’s when we see guys make bad decisions on the racetrack and then maybe not so much out of their race car, but still probably a most heated time. We see guys all the time get out and say, ‘I haven’t seen exactly what happened,’ so I think over that time period you could probably have a really good idea of exactly what happened, for better or worse on both sides, and then at least probably talk things through a little bit more civil and see where you stand easier a little bit later on.”
WHY DO YOU THINK THE YOUNG DRIVERS ARE LEARNING TO RACE SO AGGRESSIVELY BECAUSE THE KEY TO FIXING IT IS WHERE IT’S COMING UP. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT? “Yeah, I do. That’s the million dollar question right now. How do you fix it? I think the biggest thing for me is probably respect of your equipment as well as other people’s. I do think that’s why my dad’s generation or Tommy Baldwin, all those guys, when I had my first late model we had only one car. That’s what a lot of race teams are and if we wrecked it, you’d have to work really hard. It’s expensive and you could possibly have to miss races. I think as you move up into the series all of that kind of gets lost a little bit more and more because all these top teams have enough cars. You’re not gonna miss a race and a lot of the times by the time I get to the shop on Mondays and Tuesdays the car is already torn apart and it looks like it’s all fine and it’s gonna be moved on, it’s not gonna put us behind that much. To me, I think it’s a respect thing. Even going to Darlington, I’ll hit the wall probably 10 times and then afterwards I’m like, ‘That just isn’t very smart.’ Taking care of my equipment and all that stuff going forward, so I don’t know. It’s easy to lose track of that and respect of your equipment, but, to me, that’s the biggest thing is you’ve got to appreciate what you’re driving and know there’s more to it in the long run.”
WOULD IT BE BETTER TO HAVE DRIVERS SELF POLICE OR SHOULD THERE BE PENALITIES FOR THOSE INFRACTIONS THAT REALLY STAND OUT? WOULD THAT WORK? “Penalties, especially in this instance from the Xfinity race, there are some very blatant incidents. I feel like that kind of gets into a gray area even in the Cup race and Xfinity races, especially at a place like Martinsville. Guys jam into line and you’re being very aggressive getting down and then your the guy behind that’s right on this guy’s bumper. You’re getting hit from behind and then it ends up causing what looks like a bigger wreck. In my mind, there’s still a big difference between what you can visually see. There are some very blatant ones and then more so racing incidents, but I think the self policing thing is interesting. I don’t want to get punched in the face, obviously, but I think that would definitely stop a lot of stuff. I don’t want to even see people fighting, to be honest. It’s just not really my thing, but when I get into guys the first thing I don’t want is to get into anything like that. It definitely deters you from doing some dumb stuff.”
DO YOU FEEL LIKE THE LEADER AT FRONT ROW NOW THAT MICHAEL HAS MOVED ON AND YOU HAVE THE MOST EXPERIENCE WITH THAT ORGANIZATION? I don’t really feel like anymore pressure or anything like that. I feel like the biggest thing I was focused on at the beginning was making sure that Zane and Noah knew their way around – everything. I kind of feel like I know how things work and all that stuff. Obviously, Zane has been here in a different role and won a lot of races with Front Row Motorsports on the truck side. More so, Noah is definitely a little bit different than how his old team was, so I wanted to make sure those guys were all ready for it coming over here. The biggest thing now is that I feel like all of our opinions are very trusted. I respect my teammates a lot and their experience and what they’re feeling, especially with all of us being the same age and getting along so well, I feel like we talk so much and bounce ideas off each other that a lot of times we really come to the same agreement in the end. I feel like that’s super collective on any feedback and all that stuff we give to the team.”
HAS ANYTHING SURPRISED YOU WORKING WITH THOSE TWO? “I think, like you said, how different all three of us are is very interesting – of how we explain stuff. I think that’s one thing going through our meetings. I’m listening to when Zane or Noah are explaining something, and then we talk about it and I’m like, ‘OK, that’s what I was feeling too,’ but we describe things very differently as different people. I think on the racetrack nothing has surprised me a ton. I’ve raced against them for a long time. I think all three of us are very aggressive at times and probably have other strengths as well. I think it’s been fun and everything has been great. I think nothing has surprised me in a bad way – only positive surprises in the way that we’re all able to work together and get focused on what we need to.”
