Larry Woody | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com

Gladeville, Tenn. – It was a long time coming, but Saturday night Todd Bodine finally came away from Nashville with a guitar over his shoulder.

Bodine won Nashville Superspeedway’s trademark trophy Gibson guitar by blowing away the field in the Nashville 200. He got his 19th career win in the NASCAR Camping World Series. The victory snapped a long winless streak in Music City that stretched back to Bodine’s trips to historic old Fairgrounds Speedway.

Bodine started his Toyota on the pole and led twice for 91 of the 150 laps, including the final 88. He sailed across the finish line with runnerup Austin Dillon a distant speck in his rear-view mirror.

Asked if he enjoyed a romp like that more than a desperate fight to the finish, Bodine smiled and said:

“It’s fun both ways. But to really go out and stomp on them like this is a testament to this team and the hard work it’s done. I’m just fortunate to be the guy who gets to drive the truck.”

“Todd had such a lead on us that we just couldn’t cut it down,” said Dillon, the series’ most promising young driver. “Every race is a learning experience and things are coming together for us.”

Aric Almirola came in third and is second in the standings to Bodine, a whopping 174 points back.

“If Todd keeps running like that, there’s nothing we can do,” Almirola shrugged. “After it was over I told Todd, ‘It’s your year.’”

“We’ve got some great trucks and we’ve had some good luck to go with it,” Bodine said. “We’ve got that Golden Horseshoe. But it (the championship battle) can be lost. You can’t look back and you can’t count anybody out.”

The victory was Bodine’s first in eight races at the Superspeedway located 40 miles outside Nashville. Bodine also was winless in “several” tries at the old inter-city Fairgrounds Speedway where the truck series originally ran.

“In one race at the Fairgrounds I had a good lead with a few laps to go but ran over some debris and cut a tire,” Bodine said. “I seemed to always have bad luck like that. Tonight kinda makes up for it.”

– Larry Woody can be reached at lwoody@racintoday.com

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