TRG Motorsports' David Gilliland beating odds with upstart Sprint Cup team

When the 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup season dawned, a slate of new teams were trying to make races and break into the series. After four races, TRG Motorsports and David Gilliland have risen above the crowd and become the little team that can.
 
To some, this has come as a surprise. To TRG, it's just a step in its long-term building plan.
 
After missing the field for the season-opening Daytona 500, TRG owner Kevin Buckler met with Gilliland at Daytona. They met the Saturday afternoon before the race - both were at the track but not competing at that point. Less than 48 hours later, Gilliland was at the shop as they put his seat in the car that was heading to Auto Club Speedway in California.
 
"It all happened kind of fast," Gilliland said of the partnership.
 
He had just parted company with Yates Racing, the team he finished 27th in driver points with in 2008. That group had added Paul Menard and formed a partnership with Hall of Fame Racing in the offseason. That left it looking for sponsorship for Gilliland and, when that couldn't be found, with the two parting company.
 
And to the meeting with Gilliland and Buckler.
 
"They missed Daytona and they weren't sure exactly what they were going to do," Gilliland said of the TRG Motorsports team. "It just all came together at the last minute. We only had two days to get ready to go to California because the truck had to leave
so early."
 
The pairing came together so fast that Gilliland didn't even have time to get his seat from one shop to the other.
 
"The seat that's in the car we've been racing the last three races is off my simulator at the shop; it's off my computer game," he said
of his race-ready seat. "That's how fast the deal came up. I didn't even have my seat from Yates yet; I had to go to my shop, unbolt my seat from my simulator and put it in the car.”
 
Since then, things have gone well. Gilliland qualified for the last three races and has performed well enough to put the team 34th in the owners standings with one race remaining before the points shift to 2009 standings week to week.
 
And he's done so in a much more conservative fashion than most of the teams have used. He's raced the same car in all three races, only getting his short-track car into the shop this week. It is, however, a car from Richard Childress Racing and with an Earnhardt Childress Racing Technologies engine.

RCR Vice President of Competition Mike Dillon has been in the teams pits "a bunch," Gilliland says, and "every race, basically, throughout practice checking up on us and watching what we're doing."
 
Gilliland has tried to be protective of his equipment while also going all-out enough to get the car in the show during qualifying each week.
 
So far, it's worked. With finishes of 33rd, 14th and 24th in those three races – all of which he made on qualifying speed - the team is one spot above the cutoff for a guaranteed starting position after the season’s fifth race.
 
It's not only what they've done that has been so impressive, though - how they've done it is also notable.
 
"We only had one downforce car, so if we wrecked it at Vegas it would probably be nearly impossible to get it turned around to come back to Atlanta," Gilliland said. "It's just been a week-to-week deal. Everybody's putting in all they can and trying as hard as they can and working as hard as they can. That's just kind of the way we've been looking at it now.
 
"… We've had some fortunate instances and other people we've been racing have had some misfortune and it's kind of put us in a good situation. We're right at 30 points inside the top 35 right now. … I'm very pleased with what we've been able to do in three races and hopefully we can keep performing and try to get a sponsor and keep going."
 
The team seems comfortable together and intent on growing. Buckler, who has enjoyed success in 15 years of competition in sports-car racing, notably with three wins in 13 outings in the 24-hour race at Daytona, didn't enter this venture lightly. Moving into the Cup series this season was a thought-out proposition.
 
He is cautiously expanding his plans for the season, though, as the team improves.
 
He said that TRG started looking at NASCAR about 18 months ago and decided to attempt to compete in the sport. The group bought a building in Mooresville, N.C., and started in the Truck series. Since 2008 the organization has 48 starts in the Truck series, with one win - Donny Lia's victory at Mansfield Motorsports Park last season.
 
"This year, our idea was to start at Daytona and see the first five races and then reassess our options," Buckler said. "We had a bad thing happen by missing Daytona, then a good thing happen by the last three races. ... We really put our head down, we focused every bit of our energy and resources on the competition side and it's been a dream come true. Here we are cracked into the top 35 with Bristol coming up."
 
He's trying to focus on his business model for the sport, to try to run a team as efficiently as possible while focusing on the competitive aspect of the sport. 
 
"My goal is to try to run the whole season and my other goal, I'd say, is I want to be the new, sort of super-efficient model for NASCAR for Sprint Cup," he said. "Small team, very efficient, business driven, strong on the competition side, but again I'd use the word efficient. I just want to be very much kind of driving that model forward. With the economy out there, it's tough to raise the big money nowadays, especially for a small team like ours, so we'll go about it a different way."
 
They try to keep their expenses down and focus on competition. They don't want to spread the team too thin, since TRG doesn't have too many cars, parts and pieces.
 
In Buckler's words, they are trying to "take a hard work ethic approach and a very humble approach, but to come here and try to be extremely competitive and try to move ourselves forward."
 
To that end, he assembled the group that includes Gilliland and crew chief Richard "Slugger" Labbe, who has years of experience with top teams in the garage.
 
It's a group hungry to succeed. And, so far, one that has done just that.
 
"I cannot tell you the number of hours that we put in," Buckler said. "I seriously doubt that there's many [teams] that the people and teams are putting in the way we're doing it - because we have to. We've got to make up for our shortcomings. … The three of us are really a good team together. It really works out well."