Todd Gilliand had an interesting 2017 racing season across all series. Just like his teammate Harrison Burton, he made full time starts in the K&N Pro Series East and West as well. On the West side, Gilliland collected six wins and the 2017 series championship. For the east, however, he won four races and finished second to Burton in the point standings. While all that was going on, Gilliland made his first ever Truck Series start at the tough concrete track of Dover International Raceway.
They say Dover is the “Monster Mile.” Well, it was a monster of a problem for the 17-year-old in his first start in the series. He qualified 15th, ran as high as first and averaged a 13th running position throughout the race. He even placed in the top 10 in both stages until lap 118 when a caution came out for Gilliland who spun in Turn 2. The damage was too severe to continue the race.
Troubles followed him into his second start of the season at Gateway. He placed his best career qualifying position of fourth, but his night ended on Lap 112 when Gilliland had transmission problems thus regulating him to a 21st place finish. It was not the greatest of back to back starts.
However, things began to turn around at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park where he finished 11th. Gilliland continued to turn in impressive results at Loudon with the best finish of his career, third. In the final two races of his 2017 season, Gilliland finished fifth at Martinsville and seventh at Phoenix. A seventh-place finish at Phoenix locked in the No. 51 Truck for a shot at the owner’s championship, which Kyle Busch Motorsports ended up winning at Homestead.
The final stats show two top fives and three top 10 finishes, an average start of 9.2, an average finish of 11.2 and two DNF’s.
Gilliland describes his Phoenix race. “It was a rough night, but we kept fighting the entire race,” he said. “I am still really proud of everyone at Kyle Busch Motorsports, as well as PEDIGREE® for being on board. My team gave me an opportunity to have a good finish and that was the goal. It’s big to just finish the race and log more laps in my memory bank for the future.”
