CONCORD, N.C. — Three blue bloods highlighted the 2018 men’s college basketball Final Four. Villanova. Michigan. Kansas.
The fourth team? Loyola Chicago.
Similarly, three powerhouse drivers spotlight the In-Season Challenge semifinals. Ryan Blaney. Chase Elliott. Christopher Bell.
The fourth driver? Todd Gilliland.
Maybe he doesn’t feel quite as dangerous as the Ramblers that March. But the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports driver still has an opportunity to pull off the unthinkable in Sunday’s semifinal Round 4 at North Wilkesboro Speedway (7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
RELATED: North Wilkesboro weekend schedule | In-Season Challenge info
“We’ve been barely hanging on by the skin of our teeth each one of these rounds,” Gilliland told reporters Wednesday at the NASCAR Production Facility. “But we’re here now, and now we only got two more guys to beat.”
Entering the In-Season Challenge as the No. 25 seed, the Californian turned North Carolinian barely scraped by in each of the first three rounds. Gilliland’s 29th-place finish at Sonoma knocked out No. 8 seed Daniel Suárez after the Spire Motorsports driver suffered an early tire failure, forcing him to run the race on an alternative strategy. At Chicagoland, he finished 16th, but also benefited from the Zane Smith/Carson Hocevar melee as Hocevar suffered damage and placed outside the top 20.
And for most of Sunday night’s race at EchoPark, which stretched into Monday morning, it seemed as if Gilliland’s fairy-tale story had an expiration date. Admittedly, all three FRM cars struggled over the course of 400-plus miles, but when opponent and No. 32 seed Alex Bowman suffered damage in a late crash, his window suddenly opened.
Bowman lined up just behind the 26-year-old for the overtime restart. At that moment, Gilliland knew the stakes with $1 million still on the line.
“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,” Gilliland explained. “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.”
Widening the scope, through 20 races — and just six until the 16-driver Chase field is set — Gilliland ranks 24th in series points, 93 points behind the provisional cutline. He has only one top 10 with an average finish a half a spot better (20.8) than 2025 (21.3).
MORE: Cup Series standings | Gilliland driver page | Front Row Motorsports
Now in his fifth full-time Cup season, Gilliland realizes the door for a postseason berth is rapidly closing, and barring unusual circumstances, he’ll be on the outside looking in. A stretch of four tracks roughly a mile or shorter over the next six races, though, has the No. 34 Ford driver encouraged about what could lie ahead.
“Going back to some short tracks will be really good for us,” he said. “When we show up to places like Martinsville, Richmond, those are places that I feel like we should be able to go out and honestly compete in the top 10 all day. North Wilkesboro, I feel like, should be in that category, but we’ve never really ran that great there [in three All-Star Weekends].
“I think consistency still just needs to be our main goal from the 34 side. Seeing what [teammate] Zane Smith has done, I think he’s shown much more speed than us, which is always tough to kind of look yourself in the mirror, and I think that goes for everyone on my team. He’s kind of showing us what the potential of our cars and our team can do. There’s definitely some room to improve, but we’re trying to chip away at it.”
With a date in the semifinals against No. 4 seed Chase Elliott, Gilliland is most certainly an underdog. The 2020 Cup Series champion is a contender nearly every week and has three All-Star top 10s at North Wilkesboro. However, Gilliland has shown flashes at short tracks with a sixth-place finish at Bristol this spring, plus a pair of top 10s in the last three Martinsville races.
Even if his underdog journey ends in the semifinals, as Loyola’s did, the still-budding driver hopes this In-Season Challenge run can create a team boost for the rest of the campaign.
“I think there’s small wins along the way,” Gilliland said, “But I definitely think from an enthusiasm side, attitude side in the shop, that this In-Season [Challenge] — any positive momentum — can definitely help us.”
