Todd Gilliland had a day he won’t soon forget at Martinsville Speedway.
Gilliland was able to hold off Ross Chastain and win the NASCAR Hall of Fame 200 for his first NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series win in his 46th start.
Gilliland took the lead on Lap 190 and was able to hold off the playoff contender in NASCAR overtime and pick up his first NASCAR national series victory.
“It feels amazing,” said Gilliland. “This place is really hard to win at. This Mobil 1 Toyota Tundra is not as pretty as we hoped it would be when we crossed the start-finish line, but man, it looks even better with water and Gatorade on it. Can’t thank JBL, Toyota, and all the fans enough. Thank you guys for sitting around. I think that was a good finish.”
Johnny Sauter, Grant Enfinger and Timmy Hill completed the top five in the NASCAR Hall of Fame 200.
Playoff contender Stewart Friesen was sixth with John Hunter Nemechek, Denny Bohn, Jeb Burton and Codie Rohrbaugh rounding out the top 10.
Immediately after the NASCAR Hall of Fame 200, qualifying was held for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series with Denny Hamlin remaining on a hot steak winning the Virginia Lottery Pole.
Hamlin, who enters the First Data 500 off of a win last weekend, will lead the field to the green flag Sunday for the fourth time at Martinsville.
“It (qualifying run) was good,” said Hamlin. “We definitely didn’t expect to run that fast for sure. We didn’t make any mock run and the fastest in practice was something like a 59 or something like that, so certainly caught us off guard, but really I just drove it to its capability and that’s kind of all I had.
“I knew when I ran it, I was pretty happy with the lap, so to have the pole is obviously a huge, huge deal here.”
Chase Elliott qualified second although he will have to drop to the rear of the field at the start of the race after he was forced to change engines after he lost his primary engine early in morning practice.
Martin Truex Jr. was third with Aric Almirola and Michael McDowell fifth.
Ryan Blaney, Clint Bowyer, Erik Jones, Daniel Suarez and defending First Data 500 race winner Joey Logano completed the top 10.
This year’s First Data 500 is scheduled for Oct. 27 (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN, SiriusXM NASCAR) and kicks off the Round of Eight for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
Martinsville Speedway PR
