Texas Motor Speedway can be a rough ride, but David Gilliland is looking forward to getting on track there this week. His No. 38 Long John Silver’s team thinks the set-up that got them a 17th-place finish at Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway last month can repeat the performance at the 1.5-mile oval in Fort Worth.
The two tracks have a similarly rough surface and carry high speeds. This year’s new Generation-6 car produced record speeds at the April race at Texas, and teams have had six months to improve on their set-ups for the track. The result could be even higher speeds for the No. 38 team and the rest of the field for this weekend’s AAA Texas 500.
Gilliland has 14 Sprint Cup career starts at the Texas track, with a top finish of 15th (2008).
Comments from Long John Silver’s team driver David Gilliland heading to Texas:
“Texas is a unique track, but we’re going to try to apply some things that we learned in Atlanta because we ran really well at Atlanta. We thought we could take what we learned in Atlanta to Charlotte, but it didn’t quite correlate and our Charlotte race didn’t go as well. But Texas, I think, is more like Atlanta. It’s rougher, a little bit higher banking and higher speeds. So, we’re going to see what we can do there.
“I really enjoy Texas. It’s one of my favorites and one of the fastest tracks we go to. We’re really looking forward to getting out there and finishing on a strong note on that style of racetrack for the year.
“It’ll be a pretty different approach from our first trip to Texas back in April because the Generation-6 car has evolved a lot since then. Or at least the approach to setting up the Gen-6 car has evolved. Every week, everybody’s constantly working to get better. Our team’s job is to make the cars better and continue the process of evolution on the cars. I feel like they’ve done a good job at that. I feel like they’re definitely different and have progressed a lot. So, I’m anxious to get back on track out there and see what we’ve learned.”
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