Wrong Place, Wrong Time For Gaughan in Kentucky

by Mike Snow - Orleans Racing

Brendan Gaughan was riding along minding his own business under the lights at Kentucky Speedway when, for probably the first time in his career, the high line turned out to be the wrong place to be.

Gaughan started the 150-lap race 14th on the starting grid and was biding his time when the two trucks running right in front of him made contact and swept down to the apron where they collected Chase Montgomery.

Sure that he was going to drive away unscathed, Gaughan took to the top of the track was just about past the accident site when Montgomery shot back across the racing surface and collected the No. 77 Jasper Engines & Transmissions Dodge into the outside wall.

“Bill Holbrook, my spotter, did a great job,” said Gaughan on the eve of his 30th birthday. “We had a good Jasper Engines Dodge tonight. I actually had a truck I think we could have gotten a top five finish with. It happened in front of me and I locked up the brakes. I don’t know happened. It was just racing or whatever. I got it stopped and missed the main guys’ wreck. I shifted and got going thinking I was the man and I looked over and saw poor Chase Montgomery, who looked like he was another victim of it. He just came up and tagged me.

“It was a good job for the Jasper Engines truck. We had about 100 Jasper associates here and we’ll just have to root for my teammate Steve Park now.”

The extensive damage to the his Dodge Ram sent Gaughan to the garage for repairs and when he returned to the race he was able to gain four positions before the checkers fell on his 29th place finish and ended a two-race top 10 streak.

The good news is Gaughan and Company managed to avoid losing ground in the point race as they maintained their 20th place ranking in the owner standings.

“It would have been easy to put it back on the truck,” said Tony “Rambo” Liberati after his longest night of being the crew chief of the Jasper Engines Dodge. “But anyone who knows me knows that wasn’t going to happen. No, when given a basket of lemons our only choice it to look for that recipe for lemonade --- and that’s what me and my boys did tonight --- We made us some lemonade.

“The Jasper Engines Dodge was hurt bad ---- but we hammered and pounded and tie-wrapped that thing back together,” Rambo added. “When the driver took it back out we were able to run better than the minimum speed --- and that’s what kept us from losing any spots in the points.”