By RaceScene Publisher on Tuesday, 23 May 2023
Category: The Checkered Flag

David Gilliland to drive for TRICON at Charlotte

TRICON Garage co-owner David Gilliland will step into his truck for Friday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway as he pilots the #1 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro.

Gilliland last made a Truck start at Darlington in 2021, where he crashed out and finished twenty-eighth. He ran three races that year, coming after another two-year absence.

In twenty career Truck starts, he has six top tens and a best finish of third at Talladega in 2018 as part of Kyle Busch Motorsports. Save for the 2018 superspeedway races, which he ran for KBM alongside his son Todd Gilliland, all of his Truck races since 2018 have been as an owner/driver for TRICON, formerly known as DGR-Crosley and David Gilliland Racing.

He is a veteran of the Cup Series, having raced full-time there between 2007 and 2015 before focusing on Todd’s development and running his team. In 2020, he won the ARCA Menards Series West season finale at Phoenix.

Wallace has raced twice at Charlotte in the Trucks, finishing sixth in 2009 and twenty-seventh in 2015.

“I’m beyond excited to get back into the driver’s seat and strap into our #1 Tundra TRD Pro,” said Gilliland. “It has been rewarding to step back and focus on growing our team and the transition back to Toyota, but of course the racer in me missed being in the driver’s seat.”

The #1 is seventeenth in points and has been split between seven other drivers: Toni Breidinger, Kaz Grala, Jesse Love, Layne Riggs, William Sawalich, Bubba Wallace, and Jason White. Grala, Sawalich, and Wallace all recorded top tens in their starts, with Wallace holding its best finish of the season of fifth in the most recent race at North Wilkesboro.

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