{"id":814478,"date":"2026-07-20T16:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T16:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/814478\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T16:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T16:20:11","slug":"underdog-todd-gilliland-to-face-ryan-blaney-for-1-million-in-season-challenge-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/814478\/","title":{"rendered":"Underdog Todd Gilliland to face Ryan Blaney for $1 million In-Season Challenge prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

Todd Gilliland<\/a> has done it again with his season-best finish Sunday at North Wilkesboro, advancing into the finals of the In-Season Challenge, where the winner will receive a $1 million prize.<\/p>\n

The Front Row Motorsports<\/a> driver finished eighth, eliminating 2020 NASCAR Cup champion Chase Elliott<\/a>, who finished 17th after being trapped off the lead lap when an ill-timed caution flew.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gilliland entered the 32-driver tournament as the No. 25 seed. At Sonoma, he defeated Spire’s Daniel Suarez<\/a>, and then Spire’s Carson Hocevar<\/a> at Chicagoland the following week. He barely held off Hendrick’s Alex Bowman<\/a> at Chicagoland, and has now bested Bowman’s HMS teammate Elliott at North Wilkesboro.<\/p>\n

He now moves on to the champion’s round, which takes place in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway — TNT’s final broadcast of the 2026 NASCAR Cup season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely caught a big lucky break there at the beginning, but that was strategy,” said Gilliland as he reflected on the race. “We knew there was a risk with short pitting and everybody did, so I was definitely very proud of the strategy and kind of the way we executed the whole race. That was probably about as good as it could have gone. It\u2019s crazy. We\u2019ve got to beat one more guy for a million dollars.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Ryan <\/p>\n

Ryan Blaney, Team Penske<\/p>\n

Photo by: Meg Oliphant \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

It’s also a guaranteed\u00a0win for Ford, as he will face 2023 NASCAR Cup champion and No. 3 seed Blaney next weekend. Blaney eliminated Joe Gibbs Racing<\/a> driver Christopher Bell<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, the 12 is pretty good, that\u2019s for sure,” noted Gilliland. “That\u2019s the reason why they\u2019re at this point in the bracket, so I\u2019m excited about it. That\u2019s the crazy thing is that anything can happen. We have to do what\u2019s best for the 34 team and race all the way to the checkered flag because you never really know. We\u2019ll keep grinding away. It\u2019s pretty wild. I\u2019m pretty excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blaney will be a fierce opponent, but IMS is actually a great track for Gilliland. He finished sixth there in both 2024 and 2025, beating Blaney by one position last year.<\/p>\n

“Ford is gonna get it, so that\u2019s good,” said Blaney when asked about the finals matchup. “The Blue Oval is gonna win the In-Season Challenge. It\u2019ll be a good race. That group at FRM does a really good job and Todd is a really talented race car driver, so it\u2019ll be a tough one. Indy, a lot of strategy goes on there and a lot of things can happen, so we\u2019re gonna have to be on top of our game like every week. But it\u2019s nice that a couple of Blue Ovals have a shot at it.”<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Todd Gilliland has done it again with his season-best finish Sunday at North Wilkesboro, advancing into the finals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,3628,47994,44437,82,285763],"class_list":["post-814478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup","tag-north-wilkesboro","tag-north-wilkesboro-speedway","tag-sports","tag-underdog-todd-gilliland-to-face-ryan-blaney-for-1-million-in-season-challenge-prize"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}