This weekend, Todd Bodine will attempt to make his sixth and final NASCAR Camping World Truck Series start for the season at Pocono Raceway. It will also be his 800th career NASCAR start.
The quest for 800 began late last season when Marcus Lemonis issued a Twitter challenge. The task? Fans needed to present 800 reasons why the Camping World CEO should sponsor Bodine for six races in 2022 to help him get to that milestone.
The fans sure answered with “over 17,000” reasons according to Todd’s wife, Janet Bodine.
Congratulations to @Team_Onion … we set the goal and you achieved it. No shortcuts, no excuses just execution. This is why you are a winner. Excited to be part of history with you. @NASCAR_Trucks https://t.co/Ks4wfAKOn9
— Marcus Lemonis (@marcuslemonis) October 1, 2021
With sponsorship secured, Bodine still needed a team to race for. That’s where Halmar Friesen Racing came in, providing a truck for what the two-time Truck Series champion has referred to as his “retirement tour.
“When athletes, drivers particularly, usually when they come to the end of their career it just stops because you didn’t get a ride or something like that and there’s no fanfare, there’s no sendoff,” Bodine told Frontstretch at Texas Motor Speedway earlier this season. “You see these guys doing retirement tours and that’s great that they have that opportunity. Well, I never got that.
“In the middle of ’13 we just quit racing and for us, this is like a retirement tour, a sendoff, a thank you to the fans and everybody involved and when we’re done, we’re done.”
After being away from the Truck Series since 2013, Bodine returned at Las Vegas Motor Speedway earlier this season. The driver of the No. 62 Chevrolet ended up bringing out two cautions en route to a 21st-place finish. Five races later, Bodine was back behind the wheel at Darlington Raceway, this time posting a 10th-place finish (despite an early spin) that put a near-permanent smile on his face.
Since then, Bodine has posted results of 13th at Texas Motor Speedway, 20th at Sonoma Raceway and 27th at Nashville Superspeedway ahead of this weekend’s final start at Pocono.
While this year’s six starts helped him get to 800, Bodine’s NASCAR career has spanned the NASCAR Cup, Xfinity and Truck series over the last 37 years.
The 48-year-old from Chemung, New York, made his NASCAR debut in a 1986 Xfinity race at…
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