Tuesday, June 10, 2003 | 9:42 a.m.
Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at [email protected] or (702) 259-4089.
For several months after Brendan Gaughan won his second consecutive NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway last fall, his victorious truck -- dubbed "Lone Star" -- sat beneath a protective cover in a corner of the Orleans Racing shop near the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
After becoming the first driver to sweep both races at TMS, Gaughan assumed the lucky Dodge truck would remain untouched until it was loaded on the transporter last week for the trip to the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
But Gaughan received a shock earlier this spring when he walked into the shop and saw the front end of "Lone Star" in pieces.
"I walked into the shop one day and there's Lone Star with the whole spring buckets and the A-arms cut out of it and I just said, 'Oh, my God.' " Gaughan said.
"I looked at (shop foreman Martie Moore) and asked, 'What are we doing?' Martie just looked at me and said, 'Don't worry.' "
As it turned out, Gaughan didn't. He took his redesigned truck to Texas last weekend and won the O'Reilly 400K -- his third consecutive victory at the 1.5-mile Texas track.
"I don't second-guess anything Shane (Wilson) does," Gaughan said of his team's general manager and crew chief. "Every time I make a decision, it seems to just go to (pot). I figure if Shane's making a decision, he's got a reason for it and it works.
"That's why I think we have one of the best teams: My guys aren't afraid to take a winning truck and make it better. I just drive it. We try to give them the resources to do it and I just drive it."
The redesigned truck, which matches the other new trucks the team built for this season, allowed Gaughan to run the high groove on the track -- something most of the other trucks were unable to do Friday night.
"It worked kind of how Shane wants it," said Gaughan, 27, a Las Vegas native. "You always hear about the aero push in the Truck Series -- when you get sucked up behind people, you get no air on your nose and you get tight. On early runs, I was so loose that you don't want to turn the wheel so you go (into a corner) on a high groove and you keep the high groove all around.
"All of a sudden, I realized that it wasn't tight up there, though, exiting the corners. I passed somebody early in the race doing that and I said, 'You know, I might want to keep this a secret for a while and see if it won't come in handy later.' At the end of the race, the last 30 laps, I think I passed just about everybody on the outside."
Gaughan matched the NCTS record for most consecutive victories at a track, set by Jack Sprague at Phoenix International Raceway in 1996 and 1997.
The inaugural "Chris Trickle Father's Day Doubleheader," honoring the late local driver, also will feature Late Models, Thunder Roadsters, Legends Cars, Bandolero Cars and Bullring Bombers.
Chuck Trickle has five main-event victories on Father's Day weekend at The Bullring since the death of his son in 1998. Chris Trickle was 25 when he died as a result of being shot in the head by an unknown assailant as he drove along Blue Diamond Road on Feb. 9, 1997. The case remains unsolved.
The elder Trickle, who has three victories this season, leads Scott Gafforini by 23 points in the Super Late Model standings.
Spectator gates open at 6 p.m. and qualifying begins at 6:30.
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