NASCAR’s Brendan Gaughan takes a shine to new business venture

It was called “The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson. Yes.” Written by erudite Tom Wolfe for Esquire magazine in 1965, it was an epic tale about Junior Johnson running bootlegged moonshine through the Carolina hills en route to becoming a legend on the Grand National stock car circuit. To this day, a lot of people say it was the best story ever told about NASCAR.

Brendan Gaughan, who may (or may not) be nearing the end of the line as a NASCAR driver, recently was sitting in an office on Rainbow Boulevard. He was talking about setting up steamers and other distillery equipment for a new venture called City Lights Shine. Shine is short for moonshine.

A racing engine was sitting on the floor just outside his office. The engine won’t be used to add supercharged proof to City Lights Shine. Somebody just left it there.

Gaughan was asked if this new business venture, combined with a nice season in 2016 that saw him qualify for the inaugural Xfinity Series playoffs, makes him The Next American Hero.

“I don’t think Junior Johnson has anything to worry about with us,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh.

For starters, City Lights Shine will be every bit as legal as a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler. Distributing it won’t require racing through backwoods or eluding authorities on a midnight run. Gaughan also said the venture will have little to do with NASCAR, except for being inspired by one if its bootlegging legends.

But he said he mostly got the idea from a longtime NASCAR official named Mike Dolan, “who might have made a jar or two of moonshine in the past” but never charged for it.

Gaughan said he and family members didn’t much care for shine, except for Dolan’s. “A couple of years ago, Paula Gaughan (Brendan’s mother) said, ‘Why don’t you think about going into business with him?’ ”

Once permits are received and tacked to the wall, you’ll be able to sip City Lights Shine at Las Vegas Motor Speedway during NASCAR Weekend, and at all Speedway Motorsports Inc., tracks during other NASCAR weekends. For now, you can ask for it by name at any South Point bar — there’s still a little left from the original batch that was cooked up for a National Finals Rodeo trial run.

Gaughan said City Lights Shine is a smooth-sipping product he hopes will alter stereotypes about the production and consumption of moonshine, taking it from the backwoods of Appalachia to your grocer’s freezer, or at least your grocer’s liquor section.

“Everybody has a cousin from Georgia or Kentucky who brings it up, and you have one drink, and you go whoa! That’s nasty. We didn’t want that image,” Gaughan said.

The driver of the No. 62 South Point Chevy said City Lights Shine will be available in a variety of flavors, including light strawberry and blueberry, which may come as a surprise to Junior Johnson.

LVMS

The big oval north of town will become a little more fan friendly during NASCAR Weekend from March 10 to 12, as children 12-and-under accompanied by a ticketed adult will receive free admittance to Pole Day Friday and the Boyd Gaming 300 Xfinity Series race Saturday. For Sunday’s Kobalt 400 Cup Series event, kids 12-and-under accompanied by a ticketed adult will pay $10.

ELSEWHERE

IndyCar team owner Sam Schmidt of Henderson has announced Russian driver Mikhail Aleshin will be returning to his two-car team as teammate to James Hinchcliffe, who qualified on pole position for last year’s 100th running of the Indianapolis 500. “This is the first year in team existence we’ve been able to maintain the same two drivers, the same two sets of engineers, all the staffing,” Schmidt said about the significance of retaining Aleshin, who showed many flashes of speed in 2016.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.