When you’re Brendan Gaughan, you never have a dull moment.
The 40-year-old NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and Xfinity Series driver lives a life full enough for three men, constantly juggling racing, being a father and husband and even working in the casino industry his family has helped shape through the years. For Gaughan, non-stop activity has always been a way of life, and he loves every minute of it.
Brendan Gaughan, shown here during driver introductions at LVMS earlier this year, is racing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup and Xfinity Series this season. (LVMS photo)
“It’s just normal for me,” Gaughan said from his Las Vegas home. “My favorite thing now is Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays when I get to be home, get to be Mr. Mom a lot and stay around the house and do things with the boys. I love it, and it’s a lot of fun.
“They are the world to me.”
Gaughan helps his wife of seven years, Tatum, keep their sons, Michael, 4, and Ryland, 2, occupied when he’s not racing, doing casino work or chasing down sponsors for his cars. During our hour-long meeting at their home, Gaughan was intermittently tasked with a variety of “Daddy duties” that included settling arguments, monitoring verbal exchanges with phrases like, “We don’t use that word!” opening snacks and attempting to distract the boys with a DVD in the family room.
Gaughan cherishes his time at home before he has to hit the road on Thursdays to catch up with the NASCAR parade and says he tries to get back home to the family as soon as possible after the weekend’s races are done. Family has always been the center of Gaughan’s universe.
Brendan Gaughan loves spending time with his family — wife, Tatum, and sons Michael (left) and Ryland — when he is not racing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup or Xfinity Series. (Photo courtesy of the Gaughan family)
The son and grandson of hotel and casino magnates Michael and Jackie Gaughan, Brendan grew up working in the family business and developed an affinity for racing while watching his father compete in desert racing events like the Mint 400.
“We all as a family loved going out, being desert rats and watching dad race,” said Gaughan, who was born in Los Angeles, but raised in Las Vegas. “At the old Mint 400, you’d go out and play in the dirt, and mom would come out from the motor home and say, ‘Here comes dad!’ You’d walk out and there goes dad, vroom, for another two-and-a-half hours. We grew up doing that.”
By the time he was a teenager, the opportunity to race came along.
“When my brothers turned 15, they got to ride in the passenger seat with dad,” Gaughan said. “When I got old enough, my dad was injured. So, I didn’t get a chance to ride, I got a chance to drive.
“The rest is history from that point.”
Brendan Gaughan has driven his No. 62 Chevrolet Camaro into the top 10 in the NASCAR Xfinity Series points standings this season. (LVMS photo by Jeff Speer)
Gaughan grew up with two older brothers in a highly competitive household, an environment that helped turn him into the competitor he is today.
“No matter what we do, we grew up in a family where you didn’t let the kids win,” he said. “I still find myself not letting my nieces and nephews win at ping pong. You’ve got to teach them how to lose, too.”
Michael was an immensely supportive father to Brendan and his brothers, and it did not go unnoticed.
“If I told my dad I wanted to be a ballerina, he would have cursed under his breath, bought me a tutu and walked me to class,” Gaughan said. “I was allowed to try anything I ever wanted to. If you were good at it, you got to keep doing it, and if you weren’t, you stopped doing it.
“I didn’t have the dad who came on the field and cursed at the coaches or at you, but he wanted you to do well and to do better. He was always at every game.”
Michael Gaughan has always supported Brendan’s athletic interests through the years and has been a huge influence on his life. (LVMS photo)
Gaughan developed into a two-sport star in football and basketball in high school while also feeding his need to drive race cars, and he was recruited heavily as a place kicker in football before suffering an injury.
“I had scholarship offers to big schools, and I got hurt,” Gaughan said. “I was done playing football and wasn’t going to keep playing when I got a phone call in the middle of the summer from the brand new head coach at Georgetown.”
That call was from Bob Benson, who convinced Gaughan to be the Hoyas’ kicker. Gaughan responded by hitting 39 of 40 extra points during his freshman campaign in 1994 and earned all-conference honors for the I-AA Hoyas.
He also walked on to the basketball team, where he had the pleasure of being coached by Hall of Famer John Thompson but also the daunting task of guarding future NBA MVP Allen Iverson in practice. Gaughan considers Thompson one of the most important mentors of his life and treasures the influence Thompson had on him.
“I thank the gods up above every day that I ran into him and he got put in my life,” Gaughan said.
Gaughan said most players on the hoops team probably hated him because his job as a practice-squad member was to rough them up in practice. I couldn’t help but ask him what was tougher – trying to guard Iverson or going three-wide at nearly 200 miles per hour.
“Look at my body type. Going three-wide is pretty easy,” said Gaughan, who saw action in 25 games. “A lot of players took home game tapes to watch players on other teams, but I took home practice tapes and watched Allen. My job for two years was to do everything I could to make the team better, and that meant making Allen better.
“Whether some 5-foot, 9-inch white boy from Las Vegas could do it or not, that was my job. It was a lot of fun, and I had the best time of my life.”
An all-conference kicker on the football team, Brendan Gaughan walked on and earned a spot on John Thompson’s famed Georgetown basketball team. He appeared in 25 games and helped the Hoyas develop into a national powerhouse behind star player Allen Iverson.
Gaughan eventually decided during his junior year to focus on racing full-time, partly because of a memorable experience with a crew chief.
“I was playing college football and basketball and more interested in trying to go play sports and never really thought about racing as a career,” he said. “The day I first thought about it, my crew chief was yelling at me and grabbed my collar and had me up off the ground to teach me a lesson. I remember looking at him and saying, ‘Do you think I could do it?’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’
“So, I took it a lot more seriously, and it’s worked out well for me in the long run.”
Like most drivers, Gaughan has experienced highs and lows in the NASCAR ranks, racking up 80 top-10s and eight wins in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and also going through some lean years.
“I’ve had some amazing times and some really bad times, but that’s life,” he said. “From ’05 to ’07, we call the ‘Dark Ages.’ We were spending a lot of money trying to get better, and it wasn’t working.
“The best thing that ever happened was that team closing.”
His Sprint Cup and Xfinity Series juggling act has produced mixed results this year. Gaughan’s best Sprint Cup finish is 28th on two occasions while driving for Jay Robinson’s team, but he has seven top 10s as part of Richard Childress Racing’s Xfinity Series No. 62 Chevrolet Camaro.
“We spent a couple tough years trying to get established again, but as soon as we walked through the doors at RCR, it was like the clouds parted, the rainbow came out and the sun started shining,” Gaughan said. “It was wonderful to be me again. Richard has been so awesome and has been a huge, huge boost for me and my racing career.”
Gaughan is ninth in the current Xfinity Series points standings heading into this weekend’s Lakes Region 200 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and he said he would like to keep working on climbing up the standings while checking off a list of goals his team has for 2015.
“We have a team that is capable of winning the championship, and the goal is to get back in the fight,” he said. “Our goal is to get back in the hunt, get ourselves back in the top five and solidify ourselves there. We have a lot of goals we’re working toward and a lot of things to accomplish.”
Gaughan won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Las Vegas 350 in 2003 and has several goals still to accomplish with his current teams. (R. Marsh Starks photo)
As far as long-term goals, Gaughan isn’t sure how long he’ll continue to compete in NASCAR before transitioning into the casino business full-time.
“As long as we can keep winning races, I want to keep doing it,” Gaughan said. “I do want to (eventually) come home and do more with the family business. It’s very important to me, and my father needs to go and be able to do what he wants.”
He certainly has the experience and genes needed to excel in the family business. Gaughan learned a great deal from his grandfather, Jackie, one of Las Vegas’ pioneers in the gaming industry who owned the El Cortez, among other properties.
“I got to work for grandpa, and that was a lot of fun,” he said. “You see the stuff he did, how he did it and why he did it, and you see the things my dad has done, and they’re very similar. If it’s good for the town, it’s good for us.
“I dealt cards for my grandfather growing up, I bussed dishes for Benny Binion and have worked every facet of the (casino) industry except for the bar. I’ve done everything in the casino business and love it.”
Never one to do only one thing at a time, Gaughan said he’ll go back to his racing roots as well.
“I’ve always said that the day I stop racing NASCAR isn’t going to be a sad day because it’s the day I go back to racing in the desert again,” he said. “I’ll run in the desert until I’m 80 years old. My dad still races, and (mentor) Walker Evans is still racing.
“If my boys don’t want to drive race cars, I’ll be ecstatic, but we’ll go play in the desert no matter what.”
Up to Speed with Neal Reid 