Cheers for the Underdog: David Gilliland

David Gilliland during driver introductions at Bristol in August 2011

He is a driver that, up until a few years ago, I never paid much attention to. In fact, I never paid any real attention to him until he started racing for Front Row Motorsports. I could go into detail about his NASCAR career, but only if I did some research. I may not know a whole lot about David Gilliland, but what I can tell you is that as long as he is racing, I’m more than happy to cheer him on.

The only reason I even started noticing Gilliland was because of my cousin Kayla. She became a fan of him in 2008, and I eventually started watching him because she always pointed him out and cheered for him on race weekends. It didn’t matter what position he was in, if he even gained one single position more, she cheered.

Bristol Motor Speedway: I Call It Home

Ten years ago, I got up early one Saturday morning, hopped into a car with a friend, her family, and two of their family friends. We drove off toward Bristol Motor Speedway. I was only twelve-years-old at the time, and I barely knew anything about NASCAR. In fact, I had never even been to Bristol for a race until that day. When we arrived, my first thought was "It looks so much bigger on television". I looked at the thousands of people walking the speedway grounds, almost all of them decked out in some sort of driver's gear to proudly display who they cheered for on race day. I had no favorite driver at the time, and I could barely name any driver whose last name wasn't Johnson, Gordon, or Earnhardt.