Gilliland seems energized by strong Sonoma run

By Mike Mulhern
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
Published: June 27, 2008

In his second season on the NASCAR Sprint Cup tour, David Gilliland has become a solid driver, despite all the financial problems facing new team owner Doug Yates.

“Our whole team just has a lot of excitement right now, after our tremendous finish (second) at Sonoma,” Gilliland said. “So I think that anything is possible.”

It has been two years since Gilliland’s breakthrough NASCAR win, in a Nationwide (then Busch) race at Kentucky Speedway. That got him a Cup ride with the Yateses just a few weeks later, in a move that had a lot of second-guessers.

Gilliland put the Yateses’ Ford on the Daytona 500 pole last season and finished eighth, leading 18 laps. And he finished a respectable fourth at Talladega. But the rest of the season was pretty forgettable, which was not surprising, considering the turmoil surrounding the team as the Yateses struggled to deal with sponsorship losses.

This season has been a by-the-bootstraps affair, and Gilliland has gritted his teeth and made it work—sort of. The team is still underfinanced, and only Ford boss Dan Davis and Ford team owner Jack Roush have helped the Yateses and Gilliland make a go of it.

Sunday marked the first time this season that Gilliland has clearly had a shot at victory.

The Sonoma finish was a surprise, even for Gilliland. Crew chief Cully Barraclough “hit on some stuff late in happy hour that just made the car drive really, really good,” Gilliland said. “And it was fast.

“That’s a combination for a good day—then it was in my hands not to make a mistake. And that’s harder than it sounds.”

Particularly with Jeff Gordon on your tail.

“That’s an uncomfortable feeling, I can tell you that,” Gilliland said. “After coming here with my dad (Butch), helping my dad race, and watching Jeff win races, I wasn’t real excited about having him back there, for sure.

“But our car was pretty good on the restart before the last one; I got away from Jeff a little bit going up the hill. That made me a little more comfortable on the second one.

“But it was super-slick the last lap. So as far as challenging for the lead—it was everything I could do just to stay on the racetrack. It was wild back there. It was incredible.”

With three restarts in the final miles, did Gilliland think he had a decent shot at getting around winner Kyle Busch?

“For the restarts, our first gear was pretty high, and it was hard to really get going,” Gilliland said. “When you’re leading the race and have control and can go when you want, it’s hard for the guy right behind to time it.

“Obviously, I wanted to catch Kyle, but once I got up to turn four (at the top of the hill), I quit worrying about that and just focused on keeping my car on the track.”

“The restart before that, Jeff said I got a good run on Kyle and applied a little pressure, just hoping he’d make a mistake. That’s the toughest thing about the track that I’ve learned—my dad told me the first time I raced here ‘Race the racetrack.’”

So, while one good finish doesn’t make a season, this one, coming just days before the year’s midseason stop at high-profile Daytona, certainly is a bigger one than most for Gilliland and the Yateses, as they try to establish themselves as top challengers.

“We’re working hard at it, and it’s not easy, I’ll tell you that,” Gilliland said. “It’s a challenge every week.

“We’ve had a little bit of bad luck, but definitely our performance has improved 90 percent from what it was last year. Our cars are much better.

“It’s just a steady process that we’re chipping away at.”

Mike Mulhern can be reached at .