Catchfence

Mooreseville, N.C. (09-28-2010) – Sometimes the outcome of a race is determined long before the green flag waves. This was the case for Saturday night’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Smith’s 350 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Hours before the green flag waved, final practice happened. The No. 30 Valvoline Tundra team, who have held a dominant lead over the series championship points battle since May, had a checklist of chassis changes they wanted to go through with driver Todd Bodine in the final, 75-minute practice session. Instead of 75 minutes to work on race trim, the team was forced to sit out more than half of the session after a piece of debris lodged in the right front tire, causing air loss. This factored heavily into the race results. Bodine steered the Valvoline Tundra to his 14^th top-five finish of the season at Las Vegas, but it wasn’t the kind of race-for-the win night that he and this Germain Racing team love to have.

“The Valvoline Tundra was good enough for a fourth-place finish on Saturday night, but we didn’t get to give our Toyota a chance to really challenge for the win. For this Germain Racing team, that means we had a tough night. We are a very competitive group and to know that we were out there, racing, but not racing necessarily for the win, is hard for us to deal with,” explained Mike Hillman Jr., crew chief for Bodine and the No. 30 Valvoline Tundra.

Hillman is confident that the team knows why their Toyota was just a very few ticks shy of being a top-contender on Saturday night. It was a problem that happened Saturday morning in final practice – a problem that took precious practice time away from the team while they were working through race trim chassis setups.

“We had a flat tire 20 minutes into final practice. The Truck Series has done a great job at containing costs for teams and one of those ways is to limit the number of sets of tires teams can use for practice and for the race. We had 35 laps on our practice set when we got a flat, right front tire. Goodyear would have gladly replaced that tire for us, but, we wouldn’t have learned anything by having one fresh tire on our truck when the other three tires were 35-lap scuffs. Our practice session was basically over then because we didn’t have a matched set of tires to use. It hurt us a little in our race trim setup, but we had great pit stops and Todd did what he needed to do to get us a great finish for Valvoline and Toyota,” said Hillman.

Bodine agreed the team ran out of time in practice due to the flat tire. He explained that the team got the Valvoline Tundra handling much better toward the end of the 146-lap race.

“We got a right front flat (tire) at the start of the second practice so we missed almost all of second practice on race trim.  We needed more time,” said Bodine. “In the race, the Germain Racing pit crew adjusted on it and kept making it better and better and the Valvoline Tundra was the best it was at the end (of the race).  That’s what you have to be able to do.  We didn’t win but it was a good day for points because everybody we needed to worry about was behind us. Everyone on this Valvoline Tundra team is looking ahead to our next race already – Martinsville.”

Bodine’s fourth-place finish followed a fifth-place starting position. He leads the Truck Series championship standings by 262 points over second-place heading into a three week break before the final five races of the 2010 season. Bodine and the Germain Racing No. 30 Tundra team have collected four wins, 14 top-five and 17 top-ten finishes after 20 of 25 Truck Series events this year.

The chassis Bodine drove Saturday night, TRD-131, has still managed to score a fifth-place finish or better in all of its races this season, including earning three of the four team victories in 2010.

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- Germain Racing, Press Release