Todd Gilliland Pulls Off the Upset, Wins In-Season Challenge Over Blaney

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

SPEEDWAY, Ind. – Chalk one up for the underdog.

Todd Gilliland and Front Row Motorsports are heading home with an extra $1M after finishing ahead of Ryan Blaney and Team Penske in Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway to win the NASCAR In-Season Challenge.

Though Gilliland may have been a huge underdog coming into the matchup, anything can happen in races like these and that’s exactly what transpired on the famed 2.5-mile speedway.

With the tournament and the payday well in hand for Blaney in the late stages of the race, everything got flipped upside down on Lap 121 when Blaney found himself tangled up in a crash in Turn 3, bringing Gilliland right back into the fight.

RYAN BLANEY WRECKS IN STAGE 3 😬

He falls behind in the In-Season Challenge race for $1 million 😳 pic.twitter.com/WzEa6kHYmh

— TNT Sports U.S. (@TNTSportsUS) July 26, 2026

Blaney returned to the track with a battered Ford Mustang and looked to try and chase down Gilliland to retake the tournament win, but with track position being so crucial for the Cup Series cars, the advantage that Gilliland had over his challenger was enough to score the win with a 24^th place finish over Blaney’s 26^th place result.

“It feels really good. Obviously, we wish we ran a little bit better than 24th today, but we did what we had to do,” said Gilliland. “Really, that was the name of our game all the way throughout this challenge we just barely skated by. We were obviously a bit lucky, but we still stuck out these races. We did the best we could and luckily it was good enough, just barely every single round.

“It’s a big prize. One million dollars going to the team. That’s just massive. Our team deserves it. They all ramped up and worked extremely hard, so I’m just super proud of everyone for what they’ve done. Hopefully, we can keep building on this and the intensity that we’re able to achieve.”

As for Blaney, he explains that it’s just one of those days at the speedway where fate or luck or whatever you call it just didn’t go his way.

“We were all just trying to all funnel down into the corner and I was just trying to fill the lane and thought I had plenty of room. Obviously, I didn’t,” Blaney said.

“Shame to end it that way. We were just kind of scrapping along, and yeah, it stinks. I wanted to put together a good run today. Just try to have a shot to run well here – a place we try to run really well at. Unfortunately, it didn’t go the way we wanted. Not a fun day.”