Todd Gilliland has been making a Cinderella run in this year's NASCAR In-Season Challenge the traditional way: by having a bunch of his opponents fall out of the way.
That started at Sonoma when an early tire failure ruined Daniel Suarez's race, before Carson Hocevar picked up damage at Chicagoland when he was wrecked by Zane Smith as part of their ongoing feud.
Things looked to be going poorly for the 25-seed at Atlanta on Sunday, but his chance to progress to the final four came back to life when Alex Bowman got into a wreck late on.
Bowman took the overtime restart just behind Gilliland, who has revealed that the restart was the first time the In-Season Challenge was mentioned to him on the radio all day.
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Gilliland: In-Season Challenge run has been run
Gilliland, who will face Chase Elliott on Sunday at North Wilkesboro for a spot in the final, said on Wednesday: “We’ve been barely hanging on by the skin of our teeth each one of these rounds. But we’re here now, and now we only got two more guys to beat.”
He added: “Maybe the first time I have heard anything about the In-Season [Challenge] over the radio or during the race was after [Bowman] spun and he restarted right on my bumper.
“I was at least hoping to keep him behind me. If it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen, but I wasn’t going to do anything crazy. It would be nice to keep this one single car behind me, and we were able to do that.
“It has been a lot of fun just to see my team kind of buy into something and have something to kind of look at and pay attention to. Obviously, we’re all competitors and we’re competing against 36, 37 other guys out there, but it is just fun and a little bit of something different.”
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