For the first time since March at Martinsville Speedway, Todd Gilliland and the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports team have found themselves inside the top-10 at the end of a NASCAR Cup Series event.
Interestingly enough, it comes with a sixth-place finish in Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway — matching the same sixth-place finish that he scored in last season’s event at the iconic 2.5-mile speedway in Speedway, Indiana.
Gilliland’s finish marks his third top-10 finish of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series campaign through the opening 22 races. This achievement provides a crucial momentum boost for the No. 34 Ford Mustang team, especially since the Sherrills Ford, North Carolina-native sits 28th in points.
Now, in the final four events of the regular season — at Iowa, Watkins Glen, Richmond, and Daytona — Gilliland will need to find a victory to lock himself into the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs.
Gilliland and his crew chief, Chris Lawson, made the right call at the end of the race to stay on the racetrack later and pit in the final laps of the green-flag pit stop sequence, allowing the No. 34 to cycle back out inside the top-20, and restart 16th after a late-race caution.
The three-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series winner picked up an additional five positions on the leaderboard before his Front Row Motorsports teammate, Zane Smith, was involved in what ended up being the final accident of the afternoon.
From this point, the 25-year-old driver had to navigate another overtime restart and successfully avoided collisions with other drivers to pick up a sixth-place result on the afternoon.
“It’s crazy to finish sixth here last year and this year,” Gilliland remarked following the strong comeback finish. “It’s chaotic for sure. There’s a lot of stuff that went into that one; we missed a lot of the wrecks at the end.”
“I felt like we had a plan to put ourselves in a good spot and advance through the field in the end,” Gilliland stated about his late race charge. “That’s all you can do. Our car had a lot of speed when we needed it, so I’m happy for that and for our Front Row Motorsports guys.”
Gilliland looks to continue to build off the finish to turn around his rough string of summer races, as the last eight races have not played in his favor, with a best finish of 22nd and average finish of 27.1 during the span before his most recent finish as the series rolls into Iowa Speedway on Sunday, August 3.
Total team effort by the 34 team. ? pic.twitter.com/ii4zUfy1Pt
— Front Row Motorsports (@Team_FRM) July 27, 2025
