David Gilliland wasn’t sorry for hitting Juan Montoya in Sunday’s Cup race.
He was, however, sorry for hitting him so hard that it wrecked both their racecars.
“I meant to get him loose, I didn’t mean to wreck him and ruin both of our days,” Gilliland said. “It was just one of those racing deals, you know. I wanted to come down behind him and I just mis-judged and clipped him there.”
On Lap 264, Gilliland drove hard into the rear of Montoya, forcing the No. 42 machine up the racetrack and into the backstretch wall (watch video). The damage was so extensive, Montoya was unable to drive the car back to the garage.
Regardless of intentions, Gilliland, driver of the No. 38 Yates Racing Ford was called to pit road and held in his pit stall for five green-flag laps of racing. And once NASCAR officials realized Montoya’s car was beyond repair they instructed Gilliland and his No. 38 crew to park it for the day.
Montoya explained what transpired before the crash.
“I was running high the lap before and he went inside of me,” Montoya said. “He ran straight to the wall and I tried to get away. He put me into the wall. So I went into [Turn 1] and I punted him just a little bit to say, ‘Hey, you’re running like 50 laps behind.’ I hit him a little bit. If I had wanted to wreck him, I would have wrecked him.”
Montoya said Gilliland then retaliated.
“He came out of [Turn] 4 and just wrecked us,” said Montoya, who was running inside the top 10 before the incident. “It was like he said, ‘I’m better than him, so I’m going to wreck him.’ The decent thing is not doing it ... It’s frustrating when people do things like that.”
Initially, NASCAR penalized Gilliland five laps for aggressive driving before opting to park him the rest of the race as a result of his transgression. The driver of the No. 38 blamed his spotter for clearing him in front of Montoya a lap earlier when he came down in front of the No. 42 Dodge.
“I kind of slid up in front of him and he jacked my rear wheels off the ground going down the back straightaway and then got into me again going into Turn 1 and 2 and jacked me up way up the track,” Gilliland said. “I was trying to let him go and got a good run off the corner and just kind of misjudged it coming down across him.
“It’s a shame that it happened.”
Although Gilliland was called to the NASCAR hauler after the race, Sprint Cup Series director John Darby says he expects no further action other than a follow up before track activities at Phoenix.
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