Talladega lived up to its name and even crossed it on Sunday. We witnessed the peak of chaos on the superspeedway as smoke and debris engulfed a plethora of drivers. A massive wreck buried their glorious hopes – especially those of the Ford bandwagon. But most of them pointed fingers at one of their own for causing the chaos – Todd Gilliland. However, veteran driver Kyle Petty came to his rescue.

The Front Row Motorsports driver has been far from the spotlight for most of the season. He did hit the news recently, but for a bad reason. Yet Gilliland may not have been the rabble-raiser at Talladega. Other factors like the Next-Gen car or excessive fuel mileage may be reasons, as Petty observed.

Kyle Petty defends FRM underdog

After his K&N Pro Series West Series championships and twin Craftsman Truck Series wins, Gilliland has virtually hit a dead end. Across his three seasons in the Cup Series, the No. 38 Ford driver only owns a single top-five finish. So this underdog became an easy scapegoat to blame when the gigantic crash unfolded at the Yellawood 500 race. Austin Cindric and a massive Ford group successfully lapped Gilliland with five laps to go. But that caused a sudden loss of momentum and opened up a gap.

When the cars reconnected, Brad Keselowski bumped into Cindric, who spun out wildly like a pinball. Over 25 cars were affected, crumpling under contact and emitting smoke. Keselowski and others promptly blamed Gilliland for causing the mess. However, Kyle Petty begged to differ, calling out the drivers’ excessive fuel-saving. “Talladega should not be a fuel mileage race. From the time they said, ‘Gentlemen, start your engines,’ these guys said on pit road, ‘I’m not cranking my car. I’m not using gas right now.’ They were saving fuel before the race even started.”

Then Kyle Petty took a harsh jibe at those racers, questioning their ability to race altogether. Instead of pointing fingers at Gilliland, they should hold up mirrors. “We praise these guys as the greatest race car drivers in the world. They run three-wide, four-wide – and when we have the big wreck, they blame it on Todd Gilliland. Because he’s a lapped car running on the bottom. They can’t run two wide and pass a lapped car?” He dropped a 6-word bomb: “I guess you don’t know how to drive.“ Petty continued, “Don’t blame it on a lapped car at Talladega. There’s plenty of room – I don’t know what that’s all about.” 

And the veteran driver is not alone in holding this opinion. Even Denny Hamlin shaved off blame from the Front Row Motorsports driver.

Hamlin also sees different reasons

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The Joe Gibbs Racing team was in utter awe by the end of the race. Denny Hamlin somehow scuttled from 32nd place to a top-ten finish – all credits going to the lap 183 crash. Hamlin got away with a decent finish after his Atlanta strategy finally worked out in Talladega. So he comfortably evaluated the actual situation that went down during the wreck. At first, Hamlin fired shots at the Next Gen car, which was the root cause of the massive crash. “We see this a lot certainly with this Next Gen car. The runs get big and this thing took out everyone. It took out so many cars.”

Then Hamlin sided with Kyle Petty’s claim that Todd Gilliland was not to blame. He emphasized that as good drivers; they were supposed to go full-throttle instead of saving fuel. “I didn’t think that Todd Gilliland had a huge role in this. I saw the people were mentioning that we went by him. …Maybe it had an effect with the air that allowed them to bunch up the way they did. This is on the spotters of the 21 and 22 to say that while you’re shoving the 6, yes, you got two car links ahead. You have to plan that gap is going to close really quickly. You got to get off the guy, and they didn’t, and it caused a wreck.”

No matter the reason, the Talladega wreck will go down in NASCAR’s history as the biggest. Meanwhile, Todd Gilliland’s reputation is also partially restored with Petty and Hamlin’s support.