Todd Gilliland was in a zip-code of his own in the No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford F-150 in the closing laps of Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Toyota Tundra 225 at Circuit of the Americas.
With six laps remaining in the race, Gilliland worked his way around Tyler Ankrum for the lead, and he never looked back. When the checkered flag was displayed, the 21-year old driver had worked his margin of victory to nearly eight-seconds over runner-up Kaz Grala.
Despite appearing nearly flawless down the closing stretch of the race, Gilliland admitted he made plenty of mistakes during Saturday’s race.
“Yeah, I definitely did a lot of stuff wrong, but that’s what I love about road course racing,” Gilliland said after climbing from his truck. “There’s 20 turns here, 20 opportunities to pass, but also make mistakes.”
This marks Gilliland’s second-career NASCAR Camping World Truck Series win, and it’s his first since moving from Kyle Busch Motorsports to Front Row Motorsports. In taking the win, Gilliland scored a $50,000 bonus as this was the second of three races that make up The Triple Truck Challenge.
For Grala, he was one place short of a win, but he was more than happy to score a great run for Young’s Motorsports.
“Well that certainly was a blast,” Grala stated in elation. “Huge thanks to Tyler Young, Randy Young, everyone at Young’s Motorsports for letting me drive this truck. It’s really a pleasure when I get a chance to do so. And hey, P2, I’d say that’s pretty good. I’ll take it. One spot short of what we wanted, of course, but the 38 had just a little more pace than we did there at the end.”
Ankrum held on to finish third on tires that faded down the stretch.
Grant Enfinger finished an impressive fourth in the No. 9 CR7 Motorsports machine, while Sheldon Creed finished in fifth.
Sam Mayer, Carson Hocevar, Zane Smith, Austin Hill and Ben Rhodes rounded out the top-10 finishers on Saturday.
Paul Menard, in his NASCAR return, finished just outside the top-10 with an 11th-place effort in the No. 66 ThorSport truck.
