NASCAR Cup

Indianapolis: David Gilliland race report

Gilliland Drives Racehost.com Chevy to 30th at Indy Indianapolis, Ind., (July 26, 2009) - David Gilliland drove the No. 71 Racehost.com/TRG Motorsports Chevrolet Impala SS to a 30th place finish in today's running of the Allstate 400 at the ...

Published: Oct 2, 2009, 4:36 PM

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Gilliland Drives Racehost.com Chevy to 30th at Indy

Indianapolis, Ind., (July 26, 2009) - David Gilliland drove the No. 71 Racehost.com/TRG Motorsports Chevrolet Impala SS to a 30th place finish in today's running of the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

Indy sun Gilliland was able to lead a lap during the race. Crew chief Richard "Slugger" Labbe pitted the California native early and kept him out during a caution to gain an additional five points. The team had some trouble all weekend getting the car handling around the tricky Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

"We had trouble all weekend getting the car dialed into the track," Gilliland said. "We are usually pretty close off of the truck, but we just never found the handling with the car. Qualifying was tough, we just happened to pull one out to get in the field. We were better than we were in practice, but still not good enough. We were tight all day and we were really chasing the setup. We could never get on the front side of the handling and get ahead today."

Slugger Labbe tried every trick in the book to make-up track position.

"We pitted early for fuel as the race had gone green for a while. Slugger was trying to pull one out of the hat and help us get track position. That is tough with an ill handling car, because if you get track position and then can't hold it. That is bad. That makes for a long day. We were close to getting the Lucky Dog after we went down a lap but we couldn't quite get there today. The restarts helped a little, but what we gained we gave back. It was just a tough day."

"Pocono is next. They say that the Pocono setup and the Indy setup are similar, so we will see. We struggled a little at Pocono earlier in the season and I think that carried over to Indy. We were just too tight off of the corner and that robs you of speed down the straight."

Kevin Buckler, TRG Motorsports team principal, knows there will be days like races like this one, but has a racers perspective.

"The team did a great job to get in the field," Buckler said. "With the speed we needed to run we had to focus all of our practice time on getting into the field which meant just running qualifying laps. That puts a lot of pressure on the team to make the car right for the race. David did a great job to work on the car with Slugger and the guys all race. We didn't nail the setup today, but we have accomplished a lot. Just two years we started a NACAR truck series team. Today we raced the Brickyard 400 in the Sprint Cup Series. This team has a ton of potential in so many areas and we are working hard to find our sponsor partners for next year. Having a great group like Racehost.com join up with us is fantastic."

The team will travel to Pocono for the Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500 to be run on August 2.

-credit: trgm

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