The Colombian was trying to lap the Yates driver on lap 262 of the Dickies 500 at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday when Gilliland hit his No. 42 Dodge into its right-rear side and sent it straight into the wall.
“I was running high the lap before and he went inside of me. He ran straight to the wall and I tried to get away. He put me into the wall. So I went into one 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. He came out of four and just wrecked us. It's very disappointing. It has been great for everybody at Ganassi; we've got great cars now. It's just frustrating to have that happen,” said the Ganassi driver after the race.
The NASCAR officials punished Gilliland for the incident later on and parked his car for the remaining laps of the race. Montoya, on the other hand, finished the race in 43rd place as he was unable to get his car running after the incident. Curiously enough, Gilliland refused to take responsibility for his actions, blaming his spotter for the accident.
“It's a shame we've got some tore up race cars and we got parked. But I got up in front of him - my spotter said I was clear – and I kind of slid up in front and he jacked my rear wheels off the ground going down the back straightaway and then got into me again going into turn one and two and jacked me up way up the track. 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. I was going to let him go, so I feel real bad for those guys. I guess they were running on the lead lap and now our team is parked,” said Gilliland.
The incident comes only one week after Montoya experienced the same kind of frustration at the Atlanta Motor Speedway, where he was running into 5th place with a few laps to go before being hit by Clint Bowyer – another lapped car – when exiting the pits.
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