Guest Columnist Brendan Gaughan: It will be great to be home, but demands will be plentiful

Monday, March 1, 2004 | 9:57 a.m.

Brendan Gaughan, driver of the Kodak Penske-Jasper Racing Dodge and a Las Vegas native, is writing a column exclusively for the Las Vegas Sun during his rookie season in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series.

As excited as I am about coming home to Las Vegas to race in the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400, I also realize that this week is going to be like Daytona Speedweeks is for every other driver -- it's going to be crazy.

On one hand, it's going to be the most exciting week of the year for me, personally, and my family. On the other hand, it's going to be like, "oh, boy." I've called the speedway and asked for permission to do this or that and the Penske-Jasper folks know that we're going to need a lot of passes for all my friends and family and NASCAR is aware of it. We're going to try to make this week as painless as possible but it's going to be interesting to see how we're going to take care all of our friends and family and get all of that handled this weekend.

It's going to be a really, really hectic week -- especially doing all the media interviews. The Vegas media has always been so good to us when we were running Winston West and the Craftsman Truck Series. Every year, I did all the radio stations and TV stations but back then it was more like, "OK, here's the local guy, we've got to take care of him." Now it's like people actually want to talk to us because we're racing in the Nextel Cup Series.

My time is going to be stretched thin but it's going to be well-spent time at home. We're going to do a couple personal appearances at the Orleans and we'll be doing a couple other things around town in the days leading up to race. We'll be extremely busy but we'll make sure that we print up a list in the Sun of where we're going to be to make sure the fans can figure out how to see us.

Just understand that there are only so many hours in the day, gang, and I'm going to spend as much time as possible with every fan, like I always do.

The last time I raced in Las Vegas -- when we won the Craftsman Truck Series race last September -- was one of the greatest experiences I've had in racing.

I wish the city could understand how great the Orleans Racing team felt last year at that race. Notoriously, the city never supported that race -- there were always 12,000 to 18,000 people there -- and when we went across that stage during driver intros and there were 70,000 people in the stands and people were still coming in, it still brings a tear to my eye. That was just amazing to see that kind of turnout in Las Vegas. It made the entire team determined to win that night.

It was an honor to see that; maybe it wasn't all because of us, but I bet it didn't hurt that we were there. To know that response was there and to know that we're coming home and we're going to have over 140,000 people out here on Sunday -- I just don't know how we're going to fit all my friends and family in after 70,000 of them showed up for the truck race.

I know my Penske-Jasper guys are going to have a great Kodak Dodge prepared for me this week and I can't wait for the race. I'm not saying that we're coming in here and we're going to be the best but, with any luck, we'll be able to learn from the lumps we've taken and take from the successes we've had at LVMS and keep the success side rolling. Brendan Gaughan, driver of the Kodak Penske-Jasper Racing Dodge and a Las Vegas native, is writing a column exclusively for the Las Vegas Sun during his rookie season in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series.