Wednesday, March 3, 2004 | 9:47 a.m.
Brendan Gaughan, driver of the Kodak Penske-Jasper Racing Dodge and a Las Vegas native, is writing a column exclusively for the Sun during his rookie season in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series.
One of the greatest things about driving for team owners like Roger Penske and Doug Bawel is that they are giving me all the help I can get to make this rookie driver look good.
I've got Shane Wilson as my crew chief, we've got Dodge engineers, we've got Penske engineers, Rusty Wallace has helped a lot and Ryan Newman has helped me a lot. Penske-Jasper Racing also has given me a resource to try to get better and get faster and his name is Buddy Baker, my driving coach.
Buddy Baker has been helping me a ton -- especially at tracks like Daytona and Rockingham. He has been signed on to do the whole year with the 77 Kodak team so he's going to be there coaching me all year, coming to the tests and coming to the races. He helped me a ton at Daytona, where we qualified 19th. A lot of that was my ability to get up speed -- not because of what I did, but because of the Dodge the team built and his coaching to find as much speed out of it as I could. I'm honored to have him helping me this season.
Buddy didn't come to our Vegas test in January and I jokingly yelled at him for not coming to that test. He said, 'well, what can I teach you there? You've been there a ton.' I told him I didn't care. In this business, you learn something every time you're on the track -- even if it's a place like Vegas where I have a ton of laps.
Buddy is going to be nothing but a major help to me as a Raybestos Rookie. It doesn't matter if we're going to California or Vegas or Daytona or Pocono, where I have no experience, he's going to help me no matter where I go. And I'm not stupid; I listen. If he says do it, I try it. The Penske-Jasper folks have their data, but Buddy can tell even before he looks at the data whether I did something right or not on the track.
I've been fortunate to have some great coaches and teachers over the years, whether it was in racing or in the classroom. If John Thompson, my coach at Georgetown, tells you to run, you run; if Buddy Baker tells you to drive this line, you drive that line. You're never so great that you can never learn and there are always things you can learn.
There may be new things coming up in terms of technology and stuff, but a lot of old things still work. Buddy Baker said they're still driving the same line around Daytona as they were when he was racing, so it hasn't changed that much.
I've been fortunate in that the Orleans Racing team was one of the best teams in the Craftsman Truck Series and Penske-Jasper is also one of the best teams in the Nextel Cup garage. Buddy Baker is just one component of a great team I'm driving for and that is making the transition to the Nextel Cup Series easier for me.
Brendan Gaughan, driver of the Kodak Penske-Jasper Racing Dodge and a Las Vegas native, is writing a column exclusively for the Sun during his rookie season in the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series.
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