Sporting an opinion

David Gilliland appears to be the odd man out at Yates Racing, where the team says it will field three cars following its new partnership agreement with Hall of Fame Racing.

Along with Paul Menard's No. 98 and Bobby Labonte's No. 96, Travis Kvapil's No. 28 team is expected to remain while Gilliland and the No. 38 appear to be out.

"I just heard of the thing today, from the Internet, so that's what I assume," Gilliland said Wednesday afternoon. "I haven't actually had a sit-down with them, but I'm still under contract with them through 2009. So we're just going to have to work through it, and hopefully, we can get something else going."

Gilliland said he's sorting through the contract and seeing what he's able to do and what the next step could be, but he understands that the current economic climate makes it tough.

He was "a little bit" shocked that he is now likely without a ride just a few weeks before the Daytona 500 and the start of the new Sprint Cup season.

"It's just kind of a bummer that it's this late in the [offseason], you know?" he said. "We'll just have to see what we can come up with and see what we can try and do."

Gilliland praised Yates as a "great organization that has been very good to me," adding he hoped some of the sponsorship opportunities would still come through to allow him to remain with the team.

"That's the main focus right now is just trying to put something together," he said. "It's a tough time right now with the economy and everything else."

Gilliland burst onto the national scene in June 2006, when he stunned the racing world by driving an unsponsored part-time car to victory lane during a race at Kentucky in what is now known as the Nationwide Series.

Cup team owners immediately began expressing their interest, and he signed with Yates to replace the departed Elliott Sadler in the M&Ms-sponsored No. 38 car two months later.

He captured a pole at Talladega that year and then opened 2007 by winning the pole for the Daytona 500 and sparking optimism that Yates could return to prominence.

But aside from one top-five finish and one other top-10, Gilliland struggled along with teammate Ricky Rudd (who had just one top-10), and he finished 28th in points.

Last season, he finished a career-high second place on the road course at Sonoma but again had similar results the remainder of the season as the entire team failed to put together consistent results, leaving him with a 27th-place points finish (teammate Kvapil was 23rd).

Also, it's worth noting that Gilliland's career statistics show negligible improvement from his first season in Sprint Cup to his second.