PHOTO: David Griffin
SEASON IN REVIEW
Chemung, New York driver Todd Bodine scored his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 2004, scoring five last-place finishes in twenty-one starts during a thirty-six-race season. Bodine beat Joe Ruttman equaled Cope’s new single-season Cup Series last-place record of a year before with Bodine beating Ruttman in a bottom-five tiebreaker by a comfortable 15-7.
Bodine was competing in his thirteenth season on the Cup Series tour. The youngest of the three racing Bodines, Todd made his Cup Series debut at his home track in Watkins Glen, New York, finishing 37th in the rain-shortened Bud at the Glen on August 9, 1992. In the 1993 race at Watkins Glen, Bodine replaced Dick Trickle as the driver for owner Butch Mock, who now had sole ownership of the once-dominant #75 RahMoc Enterprises team. In nearly three seasons behind the wheel of the #75 Factory Stores of America Ford, Bodine scored three Top Fives and ten Top Tens, including a career-best 3rd at Hampton, Georgia on November 13, 1994. However, by finishing no better than 20th in points, Bodine and Mock parted ways after the 1995 season.
For the next five seasons, Bodine would drive for twelve different teams, including several runs as a relief driver for Bill Elliott, Ricky Craven, David Green, and once for his brother Geoffrey Bodine, when Todd finished last in the Coca-Cola 600 at Concord, North Carolina on May 25, 1997. By the start of the 2004 season, Bodine had scored ten Cup Series last-place finishes, having lost a ride with Sam Belnavis’ start-up #54 team after the team’s National Guard sponsorship moved to Greg Biffle’s #16. However, by maintaining his ride in the NASCAR Busch Series and scoring five wins in the series’ last four seasons, Bodine was in position to get a Cup Series ride in 2004.
Amidst NASCAR’s growing popularity, Nextel coming on board as the series’ title sponsor, and the debut of “The Chase,” full-time sponsorship money reached a plateau in 2004, and the season ironically saw several underfunded teams return to the sport. After just 45 cars showed up in Daytona Beach, Florida to make the 43-car field for the Daytona 500, NASCAR struggled to find enough teams to fill the field for the following week’s race in Rockingham, North Carolina. In the February 22 running of that Rockingham race, the Subway 400, four underfunded teams filled the final four spots in the field.
One of those four cars was the first car out that day, the #09 Phoenix Racing Dodge driven by 59-year-old Joe Ruttman, the 1986 LASTCAR Cup Series Champion. Although Johnny Benson, Jr. gave the #09 a respectable 27th-place finish in the 500, the James Finch-owned team originally had no plans to run at Rockingham. Following news of the short field, Finch tabbed Ruttman to drive, but he was parked by NASCAR after the opening lap because the team failed to provide a pit crew. Ruttman, to date the final Cup Series last-place finisher at Rockingham, finished last four more times in 2004, but only started six more races, accounting for his loss in the bottom-five tiebreaker.
Rockingham’s three other “field fillers,” as they became known, finished no better than the track’s future owner - 34th-place Andy Hillenburg - for the resurrected Hover Motorsports. The other drivers were 42nd-place Kirk Shelmerdine, Dale Earnhardt’s former crew chief, who started his own part-time Cup team in 2002, and fifth-year journeyman Carl Long, whose lapped 2003-bodied #46 Al Smith Dodge was involved in a spectacular flip on Lap 265. Long’s flip led to an outpouring of financial support that allowed him to buy a new car later that year, while Hillenburg’s wreck with Jeff Gordon at Darlington, South Carolina on March 21 made the teams’ slow cars a subject of controversy. This controversy intensified as several “field fillers” became regular “start-and-park” drivers who, like their predecessors, deliberately exited the race in the early laps in order to save money, while others still attempted full-race runs, but struggled to keep up with the pack.
After Rockingham, several more “field filler” teams popped up, allowing every 2004 race to run with 43-car fields. One of these new teams was owned by William Edwards, who hired Todd Bodine to drive his all-white #98 Lucas Oil Products Ford. Through the 2004 season, the Edwards team would join the four Rockingham “field fillers” as the most prolific last-place finishing teams of the year, scoring fifteen bottom-five finishes. Bodine and Edwards made their debut in the March 14 running of the Golden Corral 500 at Hampton, Georgia, where he finished 41st between Shelmerdine, Hillenburg, and Ruttman.
Bodine’s first last-place finish came at Fort Worth, Texas on April 4, where his #98 lost the engine after five laps. Although Bodine continued to drive within the “start-and-park” doldrums, his next last-place run did not come until sixteen races later at Brooklyn, Michigan on August 22, where he fell out after eleven laps due to overheating troubles. By that point, Bodine had scored four DNQs, made two starts in “start-and-park” owner John Carter’s #37 Carter’s Royal Dispos-All Dodge, and ended up driving the #50 Arnold Development Companies Dodge debuted earlier that year by Derrike Cope.
Bodine’s final three last-place runs in 2004 also came in Arnold’s #50: at Richmond, Virginia on September 11, where he crashed after nine laps; at Martinsville, Virginia on October 24, where another crash took him out after the opening lap; and at Avondale, Arizona on November 7, where a vibration was the listed cause after eleven laps. At season’s end, Bodine was 41st in points. Through the rest of 2004, Edwards’ team switched between Todd Bodine, big brother Geoffrey, Larry Gunselman, Chad Chaffin, Randy LaJoie, and two-time LASTCAR Cup Series Champion Derrike Cope, never once finishing better than Geoffrey’s 28th-place run at Long Pond, Pennsylvania on June 13.
Bodine made just fifteen more Cup Series starts and seventeen more Busch Series starts after 2004 as he turned his focus to the NASCAR Truck Series, where he still competes today. Bodine’s 241st and most recent Cup Series start came at Brooklyn, Michigan on August 21, 2011, when his run in the #66 HP Racing Toyota ended with a 39th-place finish after electrical issues 21 laps into the race. The car was owned by 1989 LASTCAR Cup Series Champion Phil Parsons.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
Amidst the influx of “field fillers,” 19-year-old Kyle Busch, the younger brother of 2004 NASCAR Cup Series Champion Kurt Busch, scored his first last-place finish in his sixth career start at Hampton, Georgia on October 31. Busch, who was part of Hendrick Motorsports’ driver development program, broke a timing chain on his #84 Carquest Chevrolet after 44 laps of the Bas Pro Shops MBNA 500. The next year, Busch would win his first career race at Fontana, California en route to the 2005 Rookie of the Year Award.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) Todd Bodine [15 B5s], Joe Ruttman [7 B5s] (5)
2nd) Kevin Lepage, Kirk Shelmerdine (3)
3rd) Jeff Fuller, Hermie Sadler (2)
4th) John Andretti, Stanton Barrett, Chad Blount, Kyle Busch, Ted Christopher, Ricky Craven, Larry Gunselman, Bobby Hamilton, Jr., Andy Hillenburg, Tom Hubert, P.J. Jones, Randy LaJoie, Jason Leffler, Mark Martin, Tony Raines, Morgan Shepherd (1)
