From The Inside
by Todd Bodine-Staff Writer and Winston Cup Driver
07/10/2003

Hi Race Fans -

The NASCAR Winston Cup Series headed off to our second and final stop at the famous Daytona International Speedway for the running of the Pepsi 400.  I love restrictor plate racing, and I felt that Saturday was one of our better shots of earning our first top ten finish of the season.

We were struggling with the National Guard Ford from the get go and to be honest we expected to.  We really did not get a chance to work on the car from an aero standpoint once we brought it back from Daytona in February.  The main reason for that is that we had a lot of unfortunate incidents at Rockingham, Darlington, Las Vegas, Bristol, and Michigan that got us behind.   We have had to fix those cars and get them race ready. So, we've been behind the eight ball a bit when trying to get ahead. 

It's just the nature of the game.

With that, we knew our Superspeedway car was going to be somewhat of a challenge aerodynamically in qualifying trim.  We had to make the best of it.  The car was tight all throughout the first practice session, and did not want to go in clean air, which is what you face in qualifying.

We knew we were facing an uphill battle for time trials and were keeping our fingers crossed to just make into the show.  I really thought we had a decent run going during the session.  The humidity had dropped and I was hoping we would pick up from what we practiced, despite the trend that was going on with most of the cars.  Most of the cars had slowed down.  Unfortunately, we slowed down too. It was pretty nerve racking during qualifying and quite a relief for the BelCar Racing team once we knew we had made it safely in.

When we took the green flag on Saturday night, the car was tight from the start. However, most of the field was struggling too.  We were all going through the corners and straight-aways at half throttle.  That's a dead giveaway that the entire field needed to make adjustments.  Daytona is a track were you mash the pedal down and avoid the brakes.

I worked my way up into the top 25 before we pitted.  We took two tires only and an air pressure adjustment.  The two tires helped me get track position and for the rest of the event we were making track bar and wedge adjustments.  The No. 54 kept getting better and better.  We definitely had a shot at the top ten.

We had a close one nearing lap 100, as the semi "big one" happened right in front of us.  I locked on the brakes, and we barely made it through.  I was lucky and thankful that we made it through the smoke and spinning machines.

In the end, it all came down to fuel mileage and we knew that we were going to be required to make four pits stops and that we would end up ten laps short. 

We wound up crossing the line 13th, and it was a good finish for the team. We needed it after Michigan's heart breaker and Sonoma.  We keep getting closer to a top ten finish, I think if we rethought our pit strategy on the last stop, we could have had a better finish.  As they say, hindsight is 20/20.

After the race, I had no idea that I had hit Jimmie Johnson until he told me.  We were tight and in the draft I had a severe aero push.  I was given no indication by my spotter that he was around me and I had no idea that I had hit him until after the race. I am truly sorry about the incident, and it was by no means intentional.  It's just typical restrictor-plate racing.

The NASCAR Winston Cup Series rolls into Chicagoland Speedway, a track I claimed a pole at in 2001.  We are our taking car number 38 this weekend to the track.  We ran this car at Darlington and the Coca-Cola 600.  It qualified well at Darlington, before I got caught up in the aftermath of the Marlin/Johnson altercation.  It tested well at Lowes, but had a difficult run.  I love Chicago so hopefully we'll unload strong and keep the momentum going.

The Tropicana 400 is scheduled to get underway this Sunday from Chicagoland Speedway. The race will take the green flag shortly after 2:30 PM EST, but coverage begins live on NBC at 2:30 PM EST. MRN will take the airwaves beginning at 2:30 PM EST.

I am hoping for a great race on Saturday 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