FORT WORTH, Texas – NASCAR XFINITY Series (NXS) driver Brendan Gaughan isn’t ready to hang up his driver’s suit for good at the end of the season if he has anything to say about it.
Gaughan’s name burst into the headlines last month at his hometown track at Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway when his father, Michael spoke to reporters at the South Point Hotel and Casino and hinted that this may be the last year he sits behind a wheel of a race car.
“Every year, I almost retire,” said Gaughan at Texas Motor Speedway, site of tonight’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 (8:30 p.m. ET, on FOX Sports 1).
“When I closed my team down in 2007 and the way it closed down was personally pretty difficult. I never thought I’d race again from there in NASCAR. We’ve been talking about that for years. What happens is, my father some days is — I think best way I can put it is what my grandfather used to say — trying to tell my father a secret is like telling the Las Vegas Sun. He likes to talk when he gets around reporters.”
Still, Gaughan, 40, didn’t shy away from the fact that the subject doesn’t come up every year with father, considered a mogul in Sin City.
“Every year he and I talk about retirement,” added Gaughan. “Every year I talk about it, he talks about it, one of us does, and one of us doesn’t. We are always saying it and discussing it.”
Whether the talks become more serious year after year, the driver of the No. 62 South Point Chevrolet maintains as long as he’s competitive competing in the XFINITY Series team – he plans to stay.
“It’s always been the same strategy in my eyes: if I can’t win races, I don’t want to be here,” Gaughan added. “There was that stretch of my career that I didn’t win any, where I was with my own team that was absolutely pitiful. “I went to a Circle Bar Racing team – Rick Crawford is still going to be one of my heroes for the rest of my life for what he did for me personally – and then we worked hard at a bunch of other teams.
In 2014, the veteran driver scored his first and second XFINITY Series wins before finishing eighth in points. While winless last year, the RCR driver still remained in the hunt for the championship and a role model his younger teammates.
Before XFINITY, Gaughan had become a household name for his long tenure in the Camping World Truck Series. In 217 starts, he has earned eight wins, four at Texas Motor Speedway, including three straight.
In his second full year of trucks, Gaughan looked assure the 2003 championship. After winning six races in 24 starts, he entered the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway with what seemed a comfortable 26-point gap over Ultra Motorsports’ Ted Musgrave. On Lap 101, his season came to an abrupt end when he was wrecked by an extra truck fielded by Ultra Motorsports finishing 29th and dropping to fourth in points.
While trying to rekindle that magic from the 2003 through trucks and even a 50-race bout in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Gaughan has found a home at Richard Childress Racing, the place he has called home since 2012. Setting in, the Las Vegas, Nevada native has found himself in a stable situation with fast race cars underneath him.
The perfect recipe to keep the partnership going.
“Now at Richard Childress Racing, we’ve been up front since 2012, and we’ve won races,” he said. “As long as I can keep winning races and running up front, and if we can make this Chase and keep competing for wins and championships, I think we’ll stay around as long as I can keep doing it.”
But the relationship goes deeper than just turning lefts every week and driving for one of the most respected car owners in the garage. The bond that Gaughan and Childress have built has allowed the trust for Gaughan to spend much of the season back on the West Coast in Las Vegas attending to his family needs, while his team three time zones away prepare his race cars on a weekly basis.
“A couple years ago, I was spending 18 and 20 days apart from my family pretty regularly and that was just making life very difficult,” recalled Gaughan. “I’m lucky. I never felt that I should part from the team; I’ve always been a team guy. I played college sports (at Georgetown University). I live with my team, I’m at the shop every day. I’ve done that my entire career since I owned my team. Luckily for me at RCR, there are seven guys on my race team that have been with me since 1999, 2000, 2002. They’ve been with me since I was in my early 20s. Life was getting difficult and they said ‘Go home.’
“It’s been great and it’s actually what helped us win those couple races in the middle of 2014 and what made us run so good last year. My home life was much happier and in doing that, it made racing go better … I’m still doing the same stuff, I’m just not in the shop every day.”
With the school season drawing to a close, Gaughan will pack up his family and head to North Carolina for the summer months – allowing him to be close to his team when its needed most, the crucial summer stretch – but with trust built with those around him, including crew chief Shane Wilson – Gaughan knows he doesn’t have to worry.
“When you have great people around you, you can get away with sometimes taking the next step in life.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
