Kyle Busch won Friday night’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS) season-finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He led six times for 57 laps (of 134) on the 1.5-mile track en route to victory lane. The victory enabled Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM) to win the 2010 NCWTS owner’s championship in its inaugural season with the No. 18 Tundra. Todd Bodine — who clinched the 2010 NCWTS driver’s championship last week at Phoenix — finished fourth in the Germain Racing No. 30 Toyota.
Tundra drivers Aric Almirola (fifth), Justin Lofton (seventh), Mike Skinner (eighth), Miguel Paludo (ninth) and Tayler Malsam (10th) also recorded top-10 finishes Friday night.
David Starr (11th), Craig Goess (12th), Timothy Peters (17th), Max Papis (18th), Johanna Long (20th) and Tom Hessert (29th) were also in the field for Toyota.
Tundra drivers recorded 15 wins in 25 NCWTS races this season — the most wins for Tundra racers in a single season. The previous mark was 14 wins by Tundra drivers in 2009.
KYLE BUSCH, No. 18 Traxxas Toyota Tundra, Kyle Busch Motorsports Finishing Position: 1st How do you feel after tonight’s victory? “This is so cool. To come out here and to win in our last race and to do it in the style that we did it — it wasn’t without some excitement, that’s for sure. I can’t thank these guys here enough at Kyle Busch Motorsports — everyone like Rick Ren (competition director) and Eric Phillips (crew chief). Eric made some great race calls today and kept my head on and got me back in the race. I can’t thank Traxxas enough, Toyota, M&M’s, Flexco, NOS Energy Drink, Gillette, Camping World for this series and all the fans. It’s fun to come out here and participate in the truck races. We’re still looking for sponsors to do it some more next year. It’s real tough. Hopefully, we can find some.” Where does this win rank on your list? “I don’t know. I’ve lost track. For me, it’s great to be able to get this opportunity and come out here and race in this series, to race with these competitors. Guys like Ron Hornaday and Todd Bodine. Congratulations to Todd (Bodine) on the driver’s championship. Like I said, I can’t thank everybody on this team enough. They do such a phenomenal job. We barely made it to Daytona with a couple trucks. We went through a lot of adversity. These guys worked some long hours this year. They’ve done a phenomenal job for me. I just can’t thank them enough. Thank the SPEED Channel too for helping me with my announcement earlier this year and be able to cover our series as good as you guys do it. Thank you.” How concerned were you after the contact with Johnny Sauter? “I was pretty concerned. I just knew that we were gonna be back in traffic and my truck wasn’t great out front. It was really loose. But back in traffic, Eric (Phillips, crew chief) and these guys made another great call to tighten it up, and we were able to have a really good driving truck there at the end to come back up through there. There was a lot of trucks, man. You go back and watch the replay on that second to last restart or whatever it was, I don’t even know where I was. You go out there and you try to get the win and you try to do what you can and hopefully these guys celebrate for a long time. They deserve it an awful lot.”
TODD BODINE, No. 30 Germain.com Toyota Tundra, Germain Racing Finishing Position: 4th How does it feel to be a two-time NCWTS champion? “I never thought that I’d be a one-time champion, let alone two-time champion. I don’t know what to say. It’s because of these guys up on the stage and all the guys back at the shop that (aren’t) here, I appreciate the hard work. It’s hard in a career to be a part of a group that cares as much as this one, and is as good as this one. I’m fortunate now, this is our fifth year together and we’re going strong and I count my blessings every day to be a part of a group like this — that care and want to win and want to run up front and can do it every week.” What did you guys do different this year compared to last year to win the title? “We didn’t really do anything different. Last year, we just had bad luck. Wrong place, wrong time. A lot of times, we just weren’t handling well. But, everybody stuck it out. They dug deep, they dug within themselves to build trucks last winter. That is one thing, last winter we went to work and re-did our trucks, re-engineered them. We made them a lot better. All the guys at KHI (Kevin Harvick Inc.) are the ones that put us to that because they raised the bar so high.”
TODD BODINE, No. 30 Germain.com Toyota Tundra, Germain Racing (continued) How does it feel to win the championship? “It’s pretty awesome. Everybody at Germain Racing has done such a great job all year long. Great trucks, Jr.’s (Mike Hillman, Jr., crew chief) done a heck of a job with this team. He’s the backbone. He’s the reason we run like this. I’m proud to be a part of this race team. It’s not often in a career that you get to be a part of this, and we’ve been fortunate now for five years, and have great owners and great guys that work for us, and I couldn’t be prouder of this team.” What does it mean to have the Germain family put their confidence in this team? “When three guys get together and decide, ‘We’ve got enough confidence in this race team and we’ve got enough confidence in our driver and we’re going to put the funds behind it to do this,’ that says a lot for the people that work for them and the respect that they have for those people. And it goes both ways. We respect the hell out of them. They’re great guys. They’ve put their heart and soul into this team and this year came out of their pocket. We had Valvoline on board for four races, but they basically came out of their pocket to pay for this season and to be able to come out of here with four wins and a championship, I’m glad we could pay them back with that.” How important are Mike Hillman (general manager) and Mike Hillman Jr. (crew chief) to this team? “They’re about as ‘racer’ as you can get. Everybody on this team. Obviously, the Hillmans are the backbone. Mike (Hillman) Sr. (general manager) got this thing going and (Mike Hillman) Jr. came in and took over and he’s done a hell of a job with this team. He does more than just work on this 30 truck. He helps take care of this whole team. It is a family. It’s hard to describe when you get a group of guys together. We all squabble and quarrel and have our differences, but every family does. But, the one thing about this group is if one of them falls down, there’s three of them there to pick him up and brush him off. That’s what it takes to be champions.”
ARIC ALMIROLA, No. 51 Riverside Cafe Toyota Tundra, Billy Ballew Motorsports Finishing Position: 5th How was your race tonight? “We had a good truck, it just wouldn’t take off very good. Our truck was really good after about 10 or so laps on the tires and we just didn’t have the speed we needed right at the get-go, which is a shame because that’s what it came down to at the end, was the restarts. I’m proud of my guys. We had a great year. We won a couple races, finished second in the points. It was really, really a great year. We were very consistent. Had a lot of top-fives, a lot of top-10s. I wanted to win tonight bad, though.”
JUSTIN LOFTON, No. 7 visitPIT.com Toyota Tundra, Red Horse Racing Finishing Position: 7th
MIKE SKINNER, No. 5 International Trucks/Monaco RV Toyota Tundra, Randy Moss Motorsports Finishing Position: 8th
MIGUEL PALUDO, No. 11 Stemco Duraline Toyota Tundra, Red Horse Racing Finishing Position: 9th
TAYLER MALSAM, No. 25 Iron Horse Jeans Toyota Tundra, Randy Moss Motorsports Finishing Position: 10th
DAVID STARR, No. 81 Zachry Toyota Tundra, Green Light Racing Finishing Position: 11th
CRAIG GOESS, No. 46 Greenville Toyota Tundra, Eddie Sharp Racing Finishing Position: 12th
TIMOTHY PETERS, No. 17 Red Horse Racing Toyota Tundra, Red Horse Racing Finishing Position: 17th
MAX PAPIS, No. 9 GEICO Toyota Tundra, Germain Racing Finishing Position: 18th
JOHANNA LONG, No. 20 Panhandle Grading and Paving Toyota Tundra, Panhandle Motorsports Finishing Position: 20th
TOM HESSERT, No. 77 Cherry Hill Classic Cars Toyota Tundra, Germain Racing Finishing Position: 29th
