NASCAR Cup Series

Bodine becomes 6-time NASCAR Trucks winner

Published Jun. 5, 2010 5:36 a.m. ET

foxsports

It was his 18th career victory and his first since winning at Texas last June - a stretch of 24 races. He was already the only driver to win at least five truck races at the same track.

Bodine was on the inside for the final restart, and got a tremendous jump that kept his Toyota ahead for those final two laps.

Ron Hornaday, who had been battling Bodine for the lead most of the race, slipped all the way to ninth in that final surge.

Johnny Sauter finished second in his Chevrolet, ahead of polesitter Austin Dillon, the rookie driver who is the 20-year-old grandson of NASCAR Sprint Cup car owner Richard Childress.

On the restart before the final caution, Bodine then held off the hard-charging Hornaday, who managed to get inside going into the first turn and pushed slightly ahead on the backstretch. But when they crossed the scoring line, Bodine was still in front and stayed there the next two laps.

That is when something happened to David Starr's truck, sending him into Matt Crafton and both of them into the wall to bring out the caution that set up the green-white checkered. That caution went through the 167th lap, the scheduled end of the race.

``They made me earn it three times tonight, four times actually,'' Bodine said. ``I'm not usually that good on restarts, so I knew, especially with Ron outside me, I had to get a good one. That last one, I got a good one.''

Hornaday took his first lead of the night when Bodine got stuck in the pits when a yellow flag came out for debris just short of the midway point of the race.

But when Hornaday went into the pits under that caution, he pulled away from his stall with the gas can still attached to his truck. After the stop-and-go penalty, Bodine was back in front, where he stayed until Hornaday took back the lead on lap 102.

Hornaday still led Bodine, with the top two more than 10 seconds ahead of the next-closest trucks, when something broke on Ricky Carmichael's truck and it slammed into the wall bringing out another caution on lap 130.

But Bodine's pit stop then was about three seconds quicker than Hornaday's, putting him back in the lead. And he stayed there the rest of the way.