Gaughan Hits the Driving Jackpot

Brendan Gaughan drives a race car with all the swagger and confidence of a high-rolling crapshooter.

He ought to, since he has been around gamblers all his life. His grandfather, Jackie, and his father, Michael, own a dozen casinos in Las Vegas and a riverboat in St. Louis.

“Tell your readers that Brendan Gaughan is going to be rookie of the year next year driving a NAPA Dodge truck in the Craftsman series and also will win the championship,” Gaughan said matter-of-factly while at Irwindale Speedway preparing for Saturday night’s Winston West race. “I’ll be the first rookie to win.”

Gaughan, 26, is the defending Winston West champion and holds a 40-point lead over Mark Reed of Bakersfield for a repeat title with only the Food 4 Less 250 Saturday night left on the schedule.

“I know I’m a rich kid who’s had a lot of perks all his life, but I think I’ve overcome a lot to be where I am today, and I expect to keep on going the same way,” said the Las Vegas native whose name sounds like “gone.”

“I’ve got faith in myself, and I’m not afraid of work. My grandfather is 82 and he gets up every day and checks on his casinos. He doesn’t need the money. He just loves the work. I think I get my work ethic from my genes.”

How else but cocky could you describe a 5-foot-9 chunky kid who can’t jump and isn’t very fast afoot but still played basketball for John Thompson at Georgetown, where one of his main duties was to guard Allen Iverson in practice.

“Coach Thompson, a man I respect more than anyone in the world besides my father, told me to knock Allen around every time I could and toughen him up,” Gaughan said. “Allen hated it, but Coach kept telling him that he was getting him ready for the NBA. When I see Allen today, the MVP of the NBA, I like to think I helped make him a better player. If Coach said whack him, I’d whack him. Hard.

“I was pretty good at reading his moves when he was a freshman, but he wised up his sophomore year. He is the most intelligent basketball player I have ever seen, but he doesn’t want people to know it. He doesn’t think it’s cool.”

Gaughan enrolled at Georgetown after having been an all-state kicker in football for Bishop Gorman High in Las Vegas. An injury hampered his kicking, so he turned to basketball.

“It wasn’t that I was that good, it was that Coach Thompson wanted an athletic body who would be a good practice player without fretting about not getting playing time. That was me.

“Today, if he called me and said he needed me for a game somewhere, I’d be on the next plane. That’s how much respect I have for the man. He’s just one terrific human being.”

Gaughan got into stock car racing almost by accident.

From the time he was 3 or 4, he tagged along with his father, who raced with legendary truck driver Walker Evans, to desert off-road races. When Brendan was 15, he raced a dune buggy in the Nevada desert and the next year rode with Glenn Harris in the Mint 400.

After graduating from Georgetown with a degree in human resources management, Gaughan returned home and continued racing in the desert. But he also began attending road-racing schools with Evans, Parnelli Jones and other racing friends.

“We were just having fun, not taking things serious, but somewhere along the way I passed Walker one day and it really opened my eyes. I had passed my idol on the race track.”

In November 1997, the fledgling Craftsman Truck series closed its first season with a race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Butch Miller was Evans’ driver, but he was unable to race, so Evans gave the ride to Gaughan, 22 at the time but with no oval racing experience.

“NASCAR said no but Walker wangled a test for me,” Gaughan said. “I was told that NASCAR liked its rookies to start on a half-mile and work their way up to a mile or longer. Here I was, starting on a mile-and-a-half superspeedway.

“Even after they let me qualify, and I was 17th fastest, they didn’t want me in the race, but Walker and Ron Hornaday talked them into letting me drive. I got up to ninth before I hit the wall. I was hooked, but it was another example of my living a charmed life. If I hadn’t raced in the desert with Walker Evans, and been around when he needed a driver in Las Vegas, I’d have never been where I am.”

The next year, Gaughan tried Winston West, driving in five races. He won the pole in his second start, had two top-five finishes and three crashes.

Last year he won the championship, driving for Bill McAnally, whose car had won the previous year with Sean Woodside.

Saturday night, driving McAnally’s “Bad Andy” Chevrolet Monte Carlo, he hopes to cap another winning season as a sendoff to the 2002 Craftsman Truck series.

The first pavement race Gaughan won was a super late model at Irwindale. To celebrate, he didn’t spin doughnuts with his car, he did cartwheels in front of the grandstand.

“How can I lose?” he asked. “I have the best crew chief in the business, Shane Wilson; the best mentor in the business, Walker Evans; the best sponsor in the world, NAPA auto parts; the best engine builder in the business, Kevin Kroyer; a 10,000-square-foot engine shop and a 15,000-foot main shop in Las Vegas that houses Orleans Racing.

“And Bad Andy is unbeaten in two starts, both at Irwindale.”

All Gaughan needs to win the title is to finish eighth, even if Reed wins the race. Reed plans to return to Winston West next year with a new team, Vintage Motorsports, with Bill Sedgwick as crew chief.

And if his racing career goes sour, Gaughan always has the casinos to fall back on.

“I love everything there is about casinos, and I’ve done just about everything anyone could do except tend bar,” Gaughan said. “I’ve mopped floors, worked as a cook, dealt cards. I never tended bar because when I turned 21, I wanted to be a croupier, so that’s what I did. It’s a lot more exciting than mixing drinks.

“My first job was when I was 13 and I bused tables downtown at Binion’s Horseshoe Club. Their regular workers were on strike, so I helped out. Old man [Benny] Binion was still alive then and I get a thrill today remembering how I worked alongside a gambling legend. It’s the same way I feel about working with my granddad and my dad.

“The way I love racing, and the way I love casinos, there’s no doubt I am living a charmed life. And don’t forget what I told you about winning the truck series next year.”

Speedway Bikes

Former world champions Billy Hamill and Greg Hancock, who learned their riding techniques at Costa Mesa Raceway before heading to Europe, will return Saturday night for a rare appearance at their old stomping grounds, the tiny Orange County Fairgrounds oval.

Along with a number of other riders from the British Speedway League, Hamill and Hancock will take on the Costa Mesa regulars, headed by recently crowned national champion Chris Manchester and former champions Mike Faria and Bobby Schwartz in a series of scratch races.

Also on the program will be extreme motocross jumping.

Baja 1000

Winston Cup driver Robby Gordon will take a weekend off from racing stock cars to drive his off-road Trophy Truck in the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000, which will start today in Ensenada.

Gordon won the Baja 1000 in 1989, driving solo in a Ford pickup. When he signed to finish the 2001 NASCAR season with Richard Childress, driving the No. 31 Lowe’s Chevy, he received permission to miss Sunday’s Pennzoil 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway to race in Baja.

Jeff Green will drive the Cup car Sunday.

“I was pretty torn between driving in the 1000 and racing the Lowe’s Chevy at Homestead,” Gordon said. “Although I usually drive in the Baja, I didn’t want to give up any of the momentum that the [Childress] team has gained recently. I talked to Richard about going to Homestead and he said to go to Baja and he’d just let Jeff drive, but I’ll be back at Atlanta [for the season finale] and hopefully we can pick up right where we left off.”

Gordon’s seventh-place finish two weeks ago at Phoenix was a season-high for the car.

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This Week

WINSTON CUP, Pennzoil 400

When: Friday, qualifying (CNN/SI, noon); Sunday, race (NBC, 9:30 a.m.)

Where: Homestead-Miami Speedway (oval 1.5 miles, 8 degrees banking in turns), Homestead, Fla.

Last year’s champion: Bobby Labonte. Next race: NAPA 500, Nov. 18, Hampton, Ga.

On the net: https://www.nascar.com

*

BUSCH, Miami 300

When: Friday, qualifying, 10:30 a.m.; Saturday, race (NBC, 10:30 a.m.)

Where: Homestead-Miami Speedway, Homestead, Fla.

Last year’s champion: Mark Martin.

On the net: https://www.nascar.com