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NASCAR Camping World Trucks Series
TRUCKS: Bodine ‘Not Pleased At All’ With Latest Gains
Todd Bodine has climbed to sixth in the standings with two races left, but the reigning Truck Series champion had hoped for much more...
Jared Turner  |  Posted November 02, 2011   Charlotte, NC
Todd Bodine's 2011 season in the Camping World Truck Series hasn't been up to the two-time champion's standards. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Reigning NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion Todd Bodine doesn’t know if he’ll return to Germain Racing next season.

Bodine does know that wherever he lands for 2012, he won’t be happy with another season like 2011.

With just two races left on the 25-race schedule, it’s quite plausible that the two-time Truck Series champion will fail to reach victory lane just one season after collecting four wins in a runaway march to the title.

Hampered by sponsorship uncertainty, atypically average equipment and just plain old rotten racing luck, the best Bodine can realistically hope to finish in the standings is fifth – a far cry from 2010 when the veteran driver often ran roughshod over the competition.

But while he won’t repeat as champion, Bodine would be hard-pressed to find a pair of tracks that play more to his favor than the two that remain on the 2011 schedule.

A six-time winner at Texas Motor Speedway, site of Friday night’s WinStar World Casino 350k (7:30 p.m. ET on SPEED), Bodine has demonstrated a mastery of the l.5-mile oval like few others.

“Well, obviously it’s a track that we have had success,” Bodine said. “We understand what it takes to be up front, and Junior (crew chief Mike Hillman Jr.) does a great job with that. And when you go to a place that you know you can run well, you kind of have a little extra confidence knowing that you can go there and do it again. It’s a place that we really look forward to going to.”

Ditto for Homestead-Miami Speedway, site of the season finale on Nov. 18. Bodine has a pair of victories in six starts at the south Florida track, and could thus conceivably close out the season 2-for-2 after being denied victory in the first 23 events.

“They’re mile-and-a-half tracks that we excel at, so to have the two that are left, that obviously gives us a great shot to get a win,” he said.

Win or not, Bodine is ready to put 2011 behind him.

What many prognosticators expected to be a repeat championship season quickly went south for the Chemung, N.Y., native when he recorded just one top-five finish in the first seven races.

By the start of the summer stretch, Bodine’s title hopes were toast and serious questions had emerged about whether lack of sponsorship would force him to abandon a full-time run.

But thanks to a sponsor-sharing partnership forged between Germain and Randy Moss Motorsports, Bodine wasn’t forced to sit out a race. And his results have steady improved since, with him recently moving all the way to sixth in the standings after spending much of the year outside the top 10.

Not that Bodine, a 21-time Truck Series winner, is exactly jumping for joy with his steady climb.

“We’re not pleased at all with it. We’re used to finishing in the top five every week,” said Bodine, who has 11 top-10s but just five top-fives in his 23 starts. “And to finish sixth and seventh and eighth and 11th and 12th, that’s just not what we’re about. It’s not acceptable for the standards that we’ve set for ourselves. … We’re not pleased with that performance at all.”

Todd Bodine may not return to the No. 5 Toyota next season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Bodine isn’t, however, overly concerned about the possibility of going winless for the first time in seven full seasons of Truck Series competition.

“I’m not going to say it weighs heavily on my mind,” he said. “Thinking about not winning a race, that’s not what we think about. We think about winning a race – that’s what we go every week for. And it if doesn’t happen, it’s not for lack of effort. It’s not for lack of trying and will to win. It’s just something that happened. Everybody goes through slumps, and we didn’t have the trucks this year that were competitive enough to get it done.

“And the couple times that we did, we either had bad luck or made our own bad luck. You can’t go to Texas or Homestead and put all that on your shoulders. You’ve just got to go there to try to do what you can do and win the race.”

But while Bodine might not be sweating the idea of going winless, he’s admittedly worried about the future of the Truck Series — which has been hit particularly hard in recent times by the rough economic climate.

Bodine, 47, isn’t the only top-tier driver still trying to secure a ride for next season, as four-time champion Ron Hornaday is also among those looking for work.

“I think all three (NASCAR national) series are in trouble,” Bodine said. “The corporate sponsorship we need, the corporate dollars that we need, are just not there. I don’t see anybody doing anything any different than we’ve done in years past to try to get corporations involved.

“And I think if we don’t do anything different, if we keep going with the status quo, eventually there’s going to be an end to it. I think the Truck Series needs some help. One way or another, we’ve got to figure something out.”

Jared Turner is an Associate Editor for SPEED.com, covering NASCAR and Formula One, and is an Editor for TruckSeries.com. His professional motorsports writing career began in 2005.
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