From The Inside
by Todd Bodine-Staff Writer and Winston Cup Driver
03/07/2003

Hi Race Fans -

The NASCAR Winston Cup series headed out west last weekend for our third event of the season at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The track has been particularly kind to me in 2002, as we grabbed the WC pole in the unsponsored No. 66 Ford and I won in the Busch car in 2001.

Promising testing results from the track earlier this year had us all in good spirits hoping that we could back up the pole and have a good shot at the win.

When we unloaded the No. 54 National Guard Ford on Friday for the practice session we were good. The only thing that we were fighting was that the car was a little tight. In the end, we were 17th fastest on the speed chart with a speed of 170.891 mph.

We hoped to improve on our practice speed from the morning and impress the field during qualifying. However, the car got loose in qualifying and we were unable to grab the pole and we placed 24th on the starting grid. I was not happy with the result, because we had a great car, but on Sunday we knew that the car would race well.

Throughout all the practices we really did not make any changes to the car, and even though we were not posting the fastest laps on the speed charts, everyone knew that we had one of the fastest cars at the track.

On Sunday, the goal was to go to the front and have a good finish. We took the green flag shortly after 3pm EST and I was steadily moving through the field toward the front. After about 15 laps, the car became tight and we were trapped in the mid teens. We built a lot of pressure in the right front tire, so we may have had a bad tire.

During the first round of pit stops, we adjusted the air pressure in the front tires as we reduced them by ½ pound.

The car was handling good and we were moving back toward the front when we got unlucky and were swept into the accident involving Rusty Wallace and Jeff Gordon. It was a chain reaction deal, someone ran into me and I ran into Jimmy Spencer, and then someone hit my left front and that destroyed the aerodynamics of the car.

In the closing laps, we knew that we were going to go a lap down because of the damage to the car. By staying out late in the race, we were hoping for a caution so that we could remain on the lead lap and have a good finish. Luck did not fall our way and once we pitted we were trapped a lap down.

In the end, we crossed the line 20th completing all but one lap. It was the second top twenty finish for the team this season, and heading into Atlanta this weekend we're hoping to score our first top ten.

Atlanta has been a good track for me. I was able to score my career best NASCAR Winston Cup finish of 3rd back in the fall race in 1994.

We didn't run that well at Atlanta last fall, but we feel we have figured out why and when we go back this weekend, I hope to run as well as I have in the past. We didn't test there but we sent our engineer with my brother Brett when he tested, so that we could collect data. Brett, unfortunately does not have an engineer so it worked for both of us.

The Pro Bass Shops MBNA 500 is scheduled to get underway this Sunday from Atlanta Motor Speedway. The race will take the green flag shortly after 1pm EST, but coverage begins live on FOX at 12:30pm EST, with PRN on the airwaves beginning at 12:15pm EST.

I am hoping for a great race on Sunday and hope that you will be keeping an eye on the National Guard Ford along with your favorite driver(s).

I'll talk to you next week and thanks for reading!

Todd Bodine

You can reach Todd Bodine at: tbodine@catchfence.com