Guest Columnist Brendan Gaughan: A lot of hard work went into that 22nd-place finish

Monday, March 8, 2004 | 9:58 a.m.

Editor's note: 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.

I hate to ever have to work that hard for a 22nd-place finish again, but the Penske-Jasper guys never gave up.

We started off pretty well. We ran the first 10-12 laps, it took off decent, and we thought we might be OK.

Once the Goodyears got a little older though, we started slipping and sliding, and couldn't control it. It started to be really rough to get around the place, and that was when we realized we're just going to have to adjust.

We adjusted, and kept adjusting, and never gave up, and kept adjusting, and adjusted some more, and adjusted some more.

We had one too many adjustments, and went back to being pretty loose again. But we got it home in one piece, that's always a bonus in Nextel Cup racing. When you bring your Dodge home in one piece, it means the guys in the shop get a little less work, and they can make them better instead of rebuilding.

My crew really dug hard. Shane Wilson worked hard, Buddy Baker was up there barking at me, trying to get me into different places, Roger Penske, my spotter Billy Holbrook -- that trio -- everybody was trying to help, just with any shot they could. Nobody gives up on this team, and that's what I love.

We're working hard. The Penske-Jasper team was started pretty early in the season (or, late in the year). We're still trying to get stuff going. The guys in the shop are working six or seven days a week, working 10-12 hours a day, trying to build Dodges, trying to get bodies, trying to make us better, and it's just not an overnight thing. It's going to take a lot of that Penske engineering, it's going to take a lot of that Dodge engineering, and they're working on it. We're working to get better.

On Sunday, we didn't have a great Kodak Dodge, but next week, we'll try to have a better one. Right now, we have to see what we take out of this, and go to Atlanta with it. We're getting better each week. We're getting closer to having some things right. Give us a couple more weeks and maybe we'll be up where we belong, and where Kodak belongs.

We never quit. My guys never gave up, and they worked their tails off, all the way to the end. We never could quite get it right, but we never stopped trying. 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.