From The Inside
by Todd Bodine-Staff Writer and Winston Cup Driver
04/02/2003

Hi Race Fans –

The NASCAR Winston Cup series headed off to Texas Motor Speedway last weekend. TMS marks one of the fastest non-restrictor plate tracks during the course of our schedule. Our goal heading into Texas was to have a better showing than Bristol.

The National Guard Ford was pretty good. It was a little loose but that was the characteristics of sticker tires. So, we really had no reason to complain. Heading into qualifying, everyone scuffed their tires before making their respective laps.

Our qualifying lap in the No. 54 was good, for the most part, because we only had two qualifying runs in practice and our second of the two was terrible. We were not going to complain about starting 19th.

With qualifying a memory, we changed our pace to race set-up. The first Happy Hour was terrible and the guys basically changed several little things. We ended up 13th in the second Happy Hour. In the end, we wound up with the car being a little tight but fairly competitive.

Unfortunately, we had to change engines prior to the start of the race. We mushroomed the top of a push rod - it was probably a bad push rod and not anyone’s fault. Despite the setback, we were confident in the back-up motor.

In the beginning of the race, the National Guard Ford was terrible. The track had changed and lost a lot of grip and we ended up being way too tight. However, we found out that many competitors faced the same problems. We really could not judge the guy on pit road because we made major adjustments on basically every pit stop. We put spring rubbers in on two stops and make shock adjustments on another.

Finally, we had some lady luck smile down us on as we caught a break on a long span of green flag runs. A caution came out just before we were going to pit. We had worked hard throughout the day, but when we lost our lap early, it was tough. Track position contributed to that. We had top ten lap times throughout the day.

In the end, it was a hard fought 11th place finish. You always want a top ten, but we made such great strides throughout the day that it was like a victory for us. We are all still learning each other and our program is probably behind most others because of advertising coming through so late.

The series now heads to our second restrictor plate track of the year and the first race from Talladega Superspeedway. We are taking our Daytona car, which we know races, but we need to figure out how to qualify it better. We gained 5 spots up to 35th in points so we feel like we will be in the race but we would like to qualify well. I look for good things in the race and to avoid the big one.

The Aaron’s 499 is scheduled to get underway this Sunday from Talladega Superspeedway The race will take the green flag shortly after 1pm EST, but coverage begins live on FOX at 12:00pm EST, with MRN on the airwaves beginning at 12:30pm 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