Ronda Greer Photo

After a tough qualifying run, Todd Bodine looked at the 28 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race trucks ahead of him on the starting grid as 28 serious threats to his narrow lead in the championship standings. Racing at O'Reilly Raceway Park is hard - passing is harder at this flat, tight short-track. Clearly Bodine understood that a tiny mistake would cost him his 117-point cushion, but when the checkered flag finally flew to end the 200-lap adventure, Bodine finished seventh in his #30 Lumber Liquidators Toyota Tundra and said it felt like a victory.

"It really feels like a win after the night we've had," beamed Bodine, earnestly smiling and satisfied with his finish. "Seventh place feels like victory lane. We had such a bad truck in qualifying, to do what we did to it and pull out this finish - it feels great."

Crew chief Mike Hillman, Jr. was also impressed with the finish, but moreso with the effort of the Germain Racing team.

"After nine weeks straight of racing, a lot of teams took the two weeks we had off between Memphis and Indy to relax and vacation. After Milwaukee and Memphis, we couldn't. We knew we had some things we needed to fix with our race trucks, so our team tested and put in a lot of hard work," explained Hillman. "It was really cool that we were able to use the things we learned in testing and apply them to both of our Toyota Tundras tonight - our changes to our trucks [during pit stops] were almost identical. Tonight was truly a team effort - one team, with two trucks."

Starting in the 29th position, Bodine did what the television and radio announcers said he needed to do - only the general consensus was that the passes would have to happen on pit road - instead, Bodine jumped up to 17th by lap ten, and never looked back.

"We made a change to the truck during our first pit stop that didn't help the truck in the corners, but it got better further into the run," said Bodine of the wedge and air pressure adjustments that were made by his Lumber Liquidators pit crew during his first stop for service.

Bodine eventually picked off another 13 trucks between his advances on the track and on pit road. He drove as high as sixth place, before a series of cautions and very close calls in the final laps put the veteran seventh in the final results, one spot ahead of teammate Ted Musgrave.

Heading into the Toyota Tundra 200 at Nashville Superspeedway, Bodine's point lead has extended to 182 points over Johnny Benson, a fellow Toyota Tundra driver. In front of nearly 8,000 Toyota team employees from the Princeton, Indiana, assembly plant and nearby manufacturing plants and facilities that will be in attendance, Bodine will press to extend that lead.