Bodine Gets First Victory in a Truck

Just about the time people were asking, “Does Ted Musgrave have to win every NASCAR truck race at California Speedway?” Todd Bodine answered with a resounding “No!”

Toyota Tundra driver Bodine, who won the first Busch series race when the track opened in 1997, caught and passed Musgrave’s Dodge with five laps to go, then held off the winner of the last three Craftsman Truck series races here, winning the American Racing Wheels 200 Saturday night by .049 of a second. Bodine averaged 127.141 mph over the two-mile D-shaped oval.

The victory was the first in a truck for Bodine, who was driving only his fourth truck race for the Arnold Development Companies team.

“It’s an awesome night,” he said. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

Before he and Musgrave crossed the finish line in tandem, though, both had to squeeze through a quickly closing hole high on the track to avoid Kelly Sutton’s smoking truck, which had hit the wall, spun toward the infield and was backing toward the wall again.

“I saw her coming back up,” Bodine said. “It was close. Once we got through the wreck, I matted it wide open. I knew Teddy was going to do the same thing.”

Which Musgrave did, as the incident was even closer for Musgrave, in the trailing truck.

“That was exciting,” he said, after sneaking through with inches to spare.

For most of the second half of the race, it appeared that Musgrave would repeat his victories here in 2001, ’02 and ’03. A 17.5-second pit stop put him in the lead on the 59th lap of the 100-lap race.

Bodine had been leading before that round of pit stops, but a 22.5-second stop dropped him back to 10th place.

“We had a lug-nut problem on the left front,” Bodine said of his long stop. “Somebody dropped one.”

So Musgrave sailed away, turning back a challenge by series leader Bobby Hamilton, in another Dodge, while Bodine set about making up lost ground.

“I knew we had a truck good enough to do it,” he said. “I was just hoping the tires would hold up and they did, but the rears were pretty worn at the end.”

Bodine closed up on Musgrave on Lap 94 and they raced side by side for a lap and a half before Bodine made the pass on the outside.

Jack Sprague, truck race winner here in a Chevy in 1998 and ‘99, drove another one to third place. Hamilton was fifth but increased his lead over Chevy driver Dennis Setzer from 39 to 56 points. Setzer was ninth.

The first race to start and finish under the lights at California Speedway drew driver compliments -- “The lights are really great here,” Musgrave said -- but only a sparse crowd, probably about 15,000, most scattered high in the stands near the start-finish line.

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Brazilian Thiago Medeiros won the Menard’s Infiniti Pro Series championship when he started the last race of the season, and was battling for the 100-mile race victory as well when he and Jeff Simmons crashed on the last lap in their open-wheel cars.

That left the victory in the IRL development series to Mo Nunn Racing driver James Chesson of Far Hills, N.J., driving only his second race in the series. He beat his older brother-teammate, P.J. Chesson, across the finish line, averaging 146.894 mph. Phil Giebler of Oxnard was third.

Medeiros, winner of five of the 11 races this season, escaped injury, even though his car flipped. Simmons, of Hartford, Conn., also was uninjured.