Gilliland feeling at home after solid Happy Hour run

FONTANA, Calif. -- Coming home since he has become a Nextel Cup driver hasn't always translated into a whole lot of fun for David Gilliland.

But he's hoping to change all that in the Sharp AQUOS 500 at California Speedway on Sunday. And if the way he hustled his No. 38 Ford around the 2-mile track during Happy Hour on Saturday is any indication, he's got a great chance of accomplishing his goal.

In the final Cup practice prior to Sunday's race, Gilliland turned a fast lap of 177.165 mph. Only Carl Edwards in his No. 99 Ford was faster, turning the top Happy Hour lap speed of 178.749.

"I've struggled coming here," admitted Gilliland, a native of nearby Riverside, Calif. "I've only been here twice in a Cup car, and we've just struggled. To come back home and feel like we've got a really good racecar is special. We weren't quite where we needed to be when we unloaded, but we made some good strides."

It started to show in qualifying on Friday, when Gilliland turned a lap of 180.533 that was good enough to place him 14th on the starting grid for Sunday's race. That's a vast improvement over his previous two qualifying efforts at his home track. Earlier this season, in the second race of the year, he started 40th and finished 25th; in his debut at California late last year, he started 20th but limped home in 32nd.

"In qualifying, it was better than I expected it to be. We probably could have done even better in qualifying," Gilliland said. "We had an awesome final practice session. The car is really stable. It's good. These kinds of runs are what we need for Robert Yates Racing right now."

The season began in storybook fashion for Gilliland, who came in with just 15 career Cup starts (all in 2006). He won the pole for the Daytona 500, where he sat on the front row alongside Robert Yates Racing teammate Ricky Rudd, led 18 laps in the storied race and eventually finished a highly respectable eighth for his first career top-10 finish.

Since then, Gilliland and the No. 38 team have mostly struggled everywhere but on the superspeedways. He did qualify second for and finish fourth in the spring race at Talladega, racking up his first career top-five; and he finished 11th in the July race at Daytona. Other than that, he has only five other finishes inside the top 20 and has fallen off to 28th in points.

Rudd, however, has always stood by Gilliland -- telling anyone who will listen Gilliland has a bright future ahead of him. That includes telling Gilliland, whom Rudd said he had detected getting down on himself from time to time.

"David is a very talented driver," Rudd said. "He's got all the skills that it takes and he's getting the necessary experience. It's got to be frustrating, I know. It's frustrating for me. It's a time right now where the Yates operation is rebuilding and trying to become an engineer-based team.

"The performance hasn't been all gloom. There have been some nice things along the way -- but I think right now David is being judged too much by finishing results. If he's guilty of anything, he drives too hard. He's so committed to wanting to do well that sometimes maybe the equipment at best is a 15th-place car, and David is trying to make something happen to get it to be a 12th-place car. I know he's very capable of running up front in the right equipment."

Gilliland said he appreciates all the advice he can get from Rudd, who will be making his 900th career Cup start Sunday but plans to retire for good at the end of this season. Only Richard Petty has made more career Cup starts than Rudd.

"He's been very complimentary with me, and that's meant a lot to me this year -- because we've had our ups and downs," Gilliland said of Rudd. "He's always been there to tell me, `Hey, don't give up. You've got what it takes to do it.' To hear comments like that coming from a guy with how much experience he has and who has been around the sport as long as he has really goes a long way with me.

"It's amazing, you know. He's helped me so much. Just having a guy with his amount of knowledge to go lean on really helps me. I go through his window net and ask him a lot about some of these tracks I don't have a lot of experience on. I feel like he's helping me get to that next step as a driver, and I really appreciate that."

Gilliland was in good company at the top of the speed chart during Saturday evening's final practice for Sunday's race. Following Edwards and Gilliland in the top 10 were Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick, David Stremme, Clint Bowyer, Dave Blaney, Jimmie Johnson, Kyle Busch and Reed Sorenson, respectively.

Of those, only Gilliland and Johnson, a native of El Cajon, Calif., claim California Speedway as their home track. And Gilliland said he is starting to feed off of that.

"It's neat to come back home. As a driver, just walking through the fans and hearing everybody yell, `David!' and cheering, it's a great confidence booster. And confidence goes a long way in this sport," Gilliland said.

"You see guys get on a roll. They get a good run, and the next week it carries on to another good finish. So confidence goes a long way, and coming home always brings along with it a little boost of confidence."

Especially when you run well.