Gragson, Gilliland Rebound From Early Struggles for FRM Double Top-10
The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series campaign marked the beginning of a brand-new era for Front Row Motorsports (FRM), with the organization taking on young drivers Noah Gragson and Zane Smith to partner with the team’s so-called veteran driver, 24-year-old Todd Gilliland.
It’s been an interesting start to the season for the organization, which has displayed incredible strength on the superspeedways over the years. While the DAYTONA 500 has more-or-less become a crapshoot, Todd Gilliland showed incredible strength at Atlanta Motor Speedway until a mid-race issue sent him out of contention for his first career victory.
Trading in the unpredictable nature of the superspeedways for a road course at Circuit of The Americas (COTA), didn’t exactly do much to eliminate questions for Front Row Motorsports, especially with the team’s revamped lineup for 2025.
In the off-season, Front Row Motorsports lost Michael McDowell – one of the best road course drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series – to Spire Motorsports, leading to the obvious question of whether or not the organization would continue being successful on road courses without McDowell.
By the end of Sunday’s EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix, the answer was clearly yes.
Both Noah Gragson and Todd Gilliland managed to collect top-10 finishes in Sunday’s event in Austin, Texas, with Gragson running as high as fifth in the closing laps before fading to eighth, and Gilliland sneaking into the top 10 during the final couple of circuits around the 2.4-mile road course.
The double top-10 marks the seventh time in history that Front Row Motorsports has placed multiple entries inside the top-10, all of which have come on superspeedways and road courses. The more interesting fact, though, is that all seven have included either Todd or David Gilliland.
With Gragson (P8) and Gilliland (P10) finishing T10 at COTA, it's the seventh time @Team_FRM has placed multiple entries in the top-10.
— Joseph Srigley (@joe_srigley) March 4, 2025
FUN FACT: All seven times, either David or Todd Gilliland has been a part of the double top-10.#NASCAR | 📸: David Rosenblum, NKP for Ford pic.twitter.com/7N7emjSrRK
Now, to say that the path for Gragson or Gilliland to earn their first top-10 finishes of the NASCAR Cup Series campaign, would be a straight-up lie.
For Gilliland, who managed to qualify inside the top-10 on Saturday, his position near the front of the pack was short-lived after a first-lap incident had occurred when Ross Chastain attempted to dive into the first corner past his means, colliding with Chase Elliott, who then blocked the path for the driver of the No. 34.
The remainder of the afternoon for the Sherrills Ford, North Carolina-native was spent hunting track position, and as the laps clicked off, the No. 34 Ford Mustang Dark Horse slowly and methodically worked itself back towards the front of the pack.
In the final stint of the race, Gilliland was able to restart inside the top-15, and spent the final 13-lap green-flag run rooting and gouging for a spot inside the top-10, eventually getting there with a last-lap move on Ross Chastain.
“We knew it would look different here today. We started 10th and we finished 10th but we battled all day. We were okay at the beginning, but we got stuck behind [Chase Elliott] literally in turn one. That is how it goes sometimes. I am just really proud of the fight in our team,” said Gilliland. “We fought through a lot. We got a little lucky with the caution there at the end but overall, we just kept fighting through everything. That brought home a top-10 finish for our Love’s Travel Stops Ford Mustang Dark Horse and we can be proud of what got us that result.”
RACE RESULTS: EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix at COTA
Gragson’s afternoon was equally as difficult, albeit in a totally different way.
The No. 4 Ford Mustang Dark Horse struggled immensely with the handling of the Rush Truck Centers-sponsored entry throughout the race’s opening two stages, which resulted in finishes outside the top 30 in both. But, Gragson and crew chief Drew Blickensderfer kept working on it, and eventually found something to the liking of the Las Vegas, Nevada-native.
With a solid racecar and a couple of stellar restarts during the final stage, Gragson suddenly found himself running inside the top-five. However as the laps clicked off and the tires began to fade – and drivers that had made a pit stop under the race’s final caution started driving through the pack – the Front Row Motorsports driver lost a couple of spots, but still came home a respectable eighth.
“It was not looking good after that first run. We were really, really bad. We kept our heads up and never quit. This Rush Trucks Centers team did just an awesome job of wrenching on this Ford Mustang Dark Horse. We persevered and didn’t let that early adversity get us down,” said Gragson. “It was a lot of hard work throughout the day but I am super proud of everyone’s efforts. It just matters what that scoreboard says at the end of the day, not what it took to get there. We brought it home in one piece and in the top-10.”
The eighth-place result for Noah Gragson on Sunday marks his first top-10 in the NASCAR Cup Series on a road course, and beats his previous-best road course finish at NASCAR’s top-level, which came last Summer at Watkins Glen International, where he finished 11th for Stewart-Haas Racing.
Both Gragson and Gilliland will look to build some more momentum this weekend at Phoenix Raceway for the first short-oval event of the season. Gilliland currently sits 19th in NASCAR Cup Series point standings, with Gragson sitting 27th.
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Joseph Srigley covers NASCAR for TobyChristie.com, Racing America, and OnSI, and is the owner of the #SrigleyStats brand. With a higher education in the subjects of business, mathematics, and data analytics, Joseph is able to fully understand the inner workings of the sport through multiple points of perspective.