Gilliland likes the road ahead

SONOMA, Calif. -- Two years after arriving as NASCAR’s Cinderella man, David Gilliland is still looking for his first win in the sport’s premier Sprint Cup Series.

But Gilliland, who grew up in Riverside and honed his skills driving in NASCAR’s lower-level circuits in the West, said he remained confident of getting that elusive first victory.

“I feel like our performance has improved 90% from what it was last year,” Gilliland said Sunday after finishing second -- his best Cup finish -- behind winner Kyle Busch in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway.

“It’s just a steady process that we are chipping away at,” he said.

Gilliland drives the No. 38 Ford for Yates Racing, a two-car team that has struggled to keep pace with such strong teams as Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Fenway Racing, and to maintain the sponsorship cash needed to make inroads on those teams.

But Gilliland’s teammate, Travis Kvapil, is 18th in the point standings and Gilliland is 21st, with both ahead of such Cup veterans as Kurt Busch, Casey Mears, Bobby Labonte and Elliott Sadler.

That Gilliland, 32, had his best showing at the 10-turn Infineon road course near Napa Valley was not entirely surprising. Both he and his father, Butch Gilliland, had raced at Infineon before David reached NASCAR’s major leagues.

David Gilliland got his break two years ago when he unexpectedly held off several Cup drivers to win a race in NASCAR’s second-tier Nationwide Series (then called the Busch Series) at Kentucky Speedway.

Yates quickly hired him and he drove in the last 14 Cup races in 2006. The following February, Gilliland stunned the sport by winning the pole for its crown-jewel race, the Daytona 500, and he seemed poised to reach Victory Lane before the year was out.

Instead, Gilliland struggled to climb NASCAR’s learning curve as Yates struggled to field competitive cars. He finished a disappointing 28th in the standings and, at one point, two-time champion Tony Stewart publicly questioned whether Gilliland belonged in the Cup series.

But after Gilliland’s strong run Sunday, his driving drew praise from Busch, NASCAR’s hottest driver this year, and from Jeff Gordon, a four-time Cup champion and five-time Infineon winner who finished third behind Gilliland.

“He’s a really good friend of mine,” Busch said of Gilliland after earning his series-high fifth win of the season. “I wasn’t sure exactly how hard he was going to push it to get his first win but he did a phenomenal job today.”

Before Sunday, Gilliland’s best finish was fourth at the 2.66-mile Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway last year, and this season it was a ninth-place finish in March at the half-mile Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.

One of Gilliland’s tasks is to run stronger on NASCAR’s so-called intermediate tracks, the 1.5-mile speedways that are the bread-and-butter of the sport.

“Our short-track stuff has been much better than it was last year,” he said. “I feel like we definitely made an improvement on the mile-and-a-half stuff. We’re working hard at it. It’s not easy.”

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Gordon, meanwhile, said he was happy to be sixth in points and poised to contend for a fifth title. But he remains winless this year and admitted his Hendrick Motorsports team was struggling to be consistent.

“We are just not getting the handling on the car,” Gordon said of his No. 24 Chevrolet. “You have to work through it and I’m just wondering, you know, if we’re working in the right direction, because I don’t feel we are. I don’t feel like we’re getting better. We’ve got to go faster.”

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Standings

NASCAR Sprint Cup standings:

*--* Driver Points Behind 1. Kyle Busch 2,408 -- 2. Jeff Burton 2,305 103 3. Dale Earnhardt Jr. 2,256 152 4. Carl Edwards 2,150 258 5. Jimmie Johnson 2,082 326 6. Jeff Gordon 2,041 367 7. Greg Biffle 2,019 389 8. Denny Hamlin 2,008 400 9. Kasey Kahne 1,958 450 10. Clint Bowyer 1,924 484 11. Tony Stewart 1,908 500 12. Matt Kenseth 1,892 516 *--*