Drew Beaugard lived a dream he thought would never come true.

Beaugard, of Imperial, Mo., was one of 10 lucky winners of the Gillette Timeshaver Challenge, a contest sponsored by Gillette featuring NASCAR’s Gillette Young Guns. The winners of the nationwide contest got the chance to drive at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C. on Dec. 7.

The following is Beaugard’s experience in his own words.
Competing in the Gillette Timeshaver Challenge was a once in a lifetime experience.
I know there’s no bigger cliché I could possibly use, but it’s difficult to put into words the thrill and emotion of spending an entire December day at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C. training in an actual NASCAR Sprint Cup car of tomorrow stock car with the Gillette Young Guns and racing in the challenge. I would guess that most of you know who the Gillette Young Guns are, but for those of you not familiar with the lineup, they include: Carl Edwards, Kasey Kahne, Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch, Clint Bowyer and Denny Hamlin.
I was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the 10 Grand Prize winners in the Gillette Timeshaver Challenge. The prize package included a trip for two to Charlotte, N.C. Dec. 6 – 8 to meet and train with the Young Guns and also the chance to drive in the challenge. The competition was based on accuracy and consistency, rather than speed.
The day started with a 7:20 a.m. rendezvous in the hotel lobby with all of the contestants and marketing representative, Josh Miller. (I mention Josh by name because he was one of the unsung heroes of this whole thing. He was responsible for making sure everything went off without a hitch and that every aspect of our experience was perfect. Thank you Josh.)
I immediately began sizing up my competition and realized that at age 40, I was younger than most of the others by about 20 years. The only exception was the eventual winner, who was in his late 40s. The majority of the contestants were people who are basically professional sweepstake entrants who spend their time entering everything they can over and over again. It did produce an interesting mix of people though.
One of the two women competitors was a 69-year-old woman from Pittsburgh. By far the most compelling contestant was Buck. He was from Memphis and was actually an amputee. He was involved in a hit and run accident while riding a Harley that he had won in a previous contest. He lost his left leg either from the knee or mid-thigh down. It didn’t stop him from being a great competitor and he eventually placed fourth.
The competition was put on with the help of The Richard Petty Driving Experience, so we had to fill out all of the paperwork basically stating that if we wrecked the cars, they would take responsibility for the cars, and we were on our own.
Having participated in The Richard Petty Driving Experience before at Kansas Speedway in August, I was familiar with the routine.
We all got suited up in our Gillette fire suits (which we got to keep) and headed into the media room for some introductory stuff. Parked in the media room was Kyle Busch’s #18 M&M’s car that we used as a demo trainer for the safety instructions.
One of the instructors climbed in and went over some of the in car stuff to familiarize us with what to expect once we got behind the wheel. We split up into smaller groups and headed out to the track for our first round of in-car training.
They put us in a street vehicle with one of the Petty trainers to show us around the track. We were shown the proper line to drive and where to accelerate and where to get off the gas. They actually had painted hash marks at intervals around the track that we were supposed to drive between for the proper line getting into and out of the corners and through the quad on the front stretch.
They also had a system of orange highway cones set out to signal where to get on and off the gas. Each of us had the opportunity to drive the street car around for a few laps at highway speeds to begin to get comfortable with the banking and hitting our marks. Easy to do at 70 mph, a little more challenging to pull off at 140 mph, especially on the front stretch.
They fire up the stock cars and the Petty instructors rip around the track for a few laps to make sure the cars are driving OK and to warm up the tires a little. At this point it’s about 38 degrees outside.
A little more trackside training and then we get to climb in and get harnessed up for our first eight-lap training run in the real cars. All of us were going to be paired up with one of the professional NASCAR drivers after lunch, so for the entire morning training sessions we were driving a COT car with the 2009 paint schemes for our respective drivers.
I was going to be working with Carl Edwards that afternoon, so I was driving around all day in the #99 Aflac Ford Fusion. This was one of the first opportunities for anyone to see the 2009 paint schemes for all of the teams represented, including the new rides for Ryan Newman in the #39 Go Army car and Clint Bowyer in the #43 Cheerios car.
I had found out the night before that I was going to be working with Carl Edwards and I was excited about that. I hate to be such a ‘homer’, but he really is one of my favorite drivers. It was nice of the marketing guys to recognize that I was from Missouri and might really enjoy working with Carl.
For me it went a little deeper than that, because although I grew up in St. Louis (Pattonville High grad, if that’s what you were wondering), I spent a good portion of my life living in Columbia, Mo. where Carl grew up.
Getting in the car is always an adventure, especially for me, as I am not exactly svelte. The biggest challenge is getting your head in with a helmet and a HANS device on. There’s a reason the pros put that stuff on in the car. You also can’t help but notice how cramped everything seems, and this is before you are strapped in with the steering wheel in place.
You find a comfortable compromise and go with it, and to be honest, after the initial thought, it never crossed my mind again, especially once we got moving. Having been through this before in Kansas, I was chomping at the bit to start turning some laps. It had become some sort of strange addiction and here I was about to get my fix, and on someone else’s dime this time.
Even though the first time in Kansas wasn’t really on my dime either, as it was a surprise gift for my 40th birthday from my wife Gina and my family. Without that initial experience, I would have never considered entering this contest in the first place.
The way the Richard Petty Driving Experience is structured, you are in the car by yourself and closely following a lead car driven by one of the Petty instructors. When I say closely, I’m talking about 3-5 car lengths, which I imagine, is nothing if you’re a professional driver. For most of us though, it’s tough to force yourself to follow that closely at those speeds.
The prior experience really paid off. If you’re staying up with your lead car and hitting your marks, the instructor will gradually increase your speed each lap. This same process was repeated during the second 10-lap morning training session. By the time we were done with the two morning sessions, I had put up the fastest lap time and overall speed for the day.
My best lap was a 41.45-second lap, which they told me comes out to a calculated top speed of 146 mph. At Lowe’s, according to my Petty instructor, 41s are about as quick as they will let you go in that second session, so I was feeling pretty good, although don’t forget this was not a competition about speed.
We break for lunch and head back to the media center where we were given our lap times and speeds for both morning runs. We had an opportunity to review those over lunch, knowing that we would have to use that information to choose a lap time that we wanted as our mark for the actual competition.
All of the competitors got to choose their own target times with the only caveat being that the fastest time allowed was 44 seconds. In order to make it a fair competition, the rules were that you had to run five consecutive laps as close to your target time on each lap as possible. The key was that it was not an average time for the five laps, each lap was judged independently. Too fast or too slow was going to count against us on every lap.
Any time above or below your target was added to your cumulative total and the driver with the lowest cumulative total discrepancy would be the winner. I of course had to choose 44 seconds as my target time.
Before they capped it at 44 I was actually considering 43 based on my training times. There was only one other competitor that also chose 44, he in fact chose 44.02 for some bizarre reason. The only reason that’s relevant is that somehow on his third competition lap he actually ran a 44.02 which helped him win the whole thing! The rest of the competitors chose times in the 48- to 60-second range which seemed like an eternity to me. I wanted to go fast.
Prior to the actual five-lap competition, I got a final five-lap lead-follow training session with the Petty instructors in the lead cars. I also had one-way in-car radio communication and coaching from my assigned Young Gun. They didn’t want us fumbling around to find the button to reply at 140 mph. Our Petty instructors were aware of our target lap times and they were going to help us dial in the sound and the tachometer readings to use for our competition laps by setting the proper pace for us. Don’t forget that these cars don’t have speedometers, so the tach readings and the sound are all you’ve got to go by.
I realized after the first two training runs that because of the way I was sitting in the car, I couldn’t see anything on the tach from about 3,000 all the way across to about 7,000 rpm because of the arc of the steering wheel.
It turns out that was exactly where the rpm were running for the speeds I was turning. I decided to slouch a little in the driver’s seat when they were buckling me in for the afternoon sessions, and that took care of the sight line issue.
We figured out that in order to run 44’s I needed to be at about 5600 rpm on the front and back stretches and pick up the throttle at about 4500 rpm in the corners. It was recommended that we not really look at the tach in the corner and concentrate on driving, but I couldn’t resist looking. It was really difficult to peek at the tach down the front stretch though.
I ended up being chosen as the first competitor to run my competition laps. Turns out this was a pretty cool deal because this was the very first time Richard Petty had ever allowed any of the participants in the Richard Petty Driving Experience out on the track in the car by themselves without a lead car. Petty was concerned about it and on the phone with the top instructor that morning. The King needed a little reassurance before he allowed it to go on. So there you have it, I was the first.
Between the final training and the competition, I finally got to meet Carl. He wasn’t even aware that I was one of his trainees until right before I got back in the car for the competition laps. It was really cool to actually meet him and get some driving tips from him.
I can tell you that based on my experience with him, he is exactly the same guy that you see on TV. Down to earth and friendly. Not at all what some people might expect from a professional athlete of his caliber and status. I made sure to let him know that I was from St. Louis and lived for a while in Columbia.
Carl gave me a few tips about consistency and relaxing and then it was into the car for the final time. I was not as nervous as I thought I would be. I had decided to just take it all in and do the best I could at that time and really to enjoy it rather than stressing out about doing well.
They fired up the #99 and we did a sound check to make sure that I could hear Carl and then I was off. They sent out a lead car to help us get up to speed coming to the start-finish line and then the lead car dropped off the track in turns 1 and 2 of the first competition lap. My biggest fear was that without the lead car, I would go way too slow.
This ended up being my downfall, as I overcompensated and ran my first two laps a little fast. Carl called my first time out to me as I was entering turn 1 on the second lap. 43.71, not too bad. For some reason, I wasn’t really in a rhythm at this point and ran my second lap at 43.20. Carl called that one out to me and suggested that I back it off just a little.
My biggest problem was that I couldn’t figure out how to check the tach coming down the front. That was the most technically challenging part as far as the driving was concerned and my reaction was to really get after it on the front just in case I was falling behind trying to hit my marks. The difference between a 43.20 and 44.00 at about 140 mph is really not much. I managed to get in a groove and put up a 44.17 on lap three and a 44.22 on lap four. I was feeling good at this point.
Lap five was feeling about the same to me, but coming out of turn 4 heading to the checkered flag, Carl came on and told me to back it up just a teeny tiny bit, and so I did. Carl called the final lap to me at 44.56 and said that he screwed up by telling me to back it up and that he should have listened to Clint Bowyer who was up on the hauler watching the whole thing.
He said that Clint told him I was fine and that he shouldn’t have said anything. He apologized and told me that all in all, he thought I had put together a really good run, considering I had no real experience. That felt good to hear coming from him. In case you forgot, the guy’s a nine-time winner this year on the top circuit. He met me down on pit road as I was getting out of the car and congratulated me again, and that was it for the competition. All I could do was watch from there on out.
A little later, Carl was in the media room eating his lunch and I got a chance to talk with him for a bit about Columbia. As it turns out, we have a common friend. Carl had a good friend in high school that was the son of a couple that I worked for in Columbia for about 10 years. We wrapped up the competition with an awards ceremony, complete with the winning car in Victory Lane and confetti and the whole nine yards. I ended up placing third. My total time was 2.04 seconds off over the five laps. The winning driver, Robert Hoffman from San Francisco who was also coached by Carl, was within something like 1.4 seconds and the second-place finisher was within about 1.8 seconds. I never got to see the actual results for any of the other drivers, only my lap times, so who knows for sure.
It was an unbelievable opportunity and something I will never forget. I would like to thank my wife Gina for patiently taping the whole ordeal and putting up with my childlike giddiness the whole weekend. I would also like to thank Gillette, NASCAR, The Richard Petty Driving Experience, all of the Young Gun Drivers, and especially Carl Edwards. I can’t wait to send in my entry forms for next year’s competition.