Gaughan searching for short-track win at SoBo

CONCORD, N.C. -- Only in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series can you go from the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas to the small-town charm of South Boston, Va.

But that's exactly what the drivers and teams of the NCTS are facing this week. Instead of Sin City, you have Small City, population 8,491. And that was according to the 2000 U.S. census. It might be smaller now.

The race track itself is quite a contrast from Las Vegas Motor Speedway, a fast 1.5-mile behemoth, especially when compared to South Boston Speedway.

SoBo, as the locals know it, is a four-tenths-mile short track, a bullring, the kind of rough-and-tumble track on which NASCAR was born.

	Credit: Nate Mecha/HSP

To win there means you have to survive first. That's what Brendan Gaughan faces in Saturday's John Boy & Billy 250. And he faces it with the lead in the race for the NCTS championship.

Gaughan happened to win in his hometown of Las Vegas last weekend, and he brings that momentum -- and a 67-point bulge over Travis Kvapil -- to South Boston.

"It's a tough race track," Gaughan said. "It's gritty. It takes a lot of old-fashioned NASCAR moxie to get around there. We hit the wall about seven times there last year. As long as you don't hit it with one end or the other too bad and keep your toe-in straight, you can still finish without the body. It's going to be the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series at its best."

And it will take a Herculean effort to win there -- as long as the jet dryers don't have to dry the track. Last year, Gaughan got a little discombobulated, it seems.

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"Some of that race I really don't remember," Gaughan said. "I spent about 35 laps throwing up in my helmet. I got sick from the jet fuel they were burning off trying to keep the track clean. I got sick for about 30 laps."

Gaughan somehow kept himself together to finish 11th. Clearly, he's looking for a lot more this year. A victory would cement his points lead would send a message to the competitors chasing him.

Sure, he's won five times this season. But he's 0-fer on the short tracks.

"As well as we like the big tracks and the emphasis we put in the wind tunnel and the time that Dodge gives us and all the engineering help that Dodge gives us, we have a lot of emphasis on the big tracks," Gaughan said.

"We've never said we don't. I think this race team needs to win on a short track just for a little bit more vindication, (to show) that we are a complete program. We've won on the flat tracks, intermediates, speedways. The only thing we haven't won on is the short tracks, and we really want to get that win for this team to kind of solidify us as an all-around fantastic race team."

One couldn't fault Gaughan for disliking short tracks. The first NASCAR race in which he drove was at Las Vegas, not on a seedy dirt track somewhere. His background is unlike most NASCAR drivers, for he started in off-road before going to college ... and playing basketball and football.

"I didn't grow up per se on short tracks or the bullrings," Gaughan said. "My very first race was on a speedway. The first time I went to Tucson Raceway Park, I asked how you raced in there. I was a big-track driver from the start.

"We haven't been that bad on the short tracks. Everybody looks and says we haven't won there in the Craftsman Trucks yet. We were top-three at IRP, top-three at Bakersfield. It's the great equalizer in racing. You take the bodies out of the picture so much, and a lot of people grew up racing the bullrings, and that makes them a little more equal to you."

That's an equality Gaughan can do without. Kvapil is close, and so is Ted Musgrave -- 100 points back in third place. Dennis Setzer, a short-track ace, is still in it, too, trailing Gaughan by 136 points with five races remaining.

But Gaughan and his Orleans Motorsports team are ready.

"How will it play out? It's not over," Gaughan said. "I've been very fortunate the last couple of weeks that I've been the leader, and we have see-sawed back and forth. We've got a bullring coming up this weekend. Then we go back to Texas and go back to Martinsville, another bullring. This is going to go to the team that is the best prepared and brings the best truck each weekend. It's going to be tight, but we feel like we've got very good Dodge trucks to finish out this year.

"We know exactly which Dodge is going to be used the next five races, and we're keeping our gun loaded. We're bringing the best Dodge truck to each race track."

They better hope it can survive South Boston. This ain't Las Vegas anymore.