Renewed commitment leads to second Truck title

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- After the primary sponsor jumped ship just before the start of the 2009 season, team owners Bob, Steve and Rick Germain considered themselves lucky to make it through the 25-race schedule that year. But when Todd Bodine still finished fourth in the points in spite of the difficulties, the three brothers decided they'd renew their commitment to the team.

A thank-you card from Bodine is definitely in the mail.

"When we got into January this year, we sat down at the shop in Mooresville, N.C., and sat down and decided that above anything, we really wanted to commit to these guys," Bob Germain said. "That we were going to get behind them, give them some funding, let them build some new trucks and run for the championship."

Bodine made good on that commitment by winning the team's second Truck championship in four years, scoring 20 top-10 finishes -- including victories at Texas, Darlington and Kentucky -- to beat runner-up Aric Almirola by 207 points.

For Bodine, crew chief Mike Hillman Jr. and the team, a second championship was perfect payback for the trust given to them by the Germains.

"[They] made the commitment to this team last winter that they were going to race the 30 truck," Bodine said. "They were going to fund it out of their pocket. They were going to make sure that we had enough to do to go win races and to race for a championship, and they had that kind of faith in [Hillman] and myself and our team to put their money where their mouth was and we went out and did what they asked us to do, and that's win races and win the championship.

"To me that says a lot for those three, to have that kind of commitment for the race team. You know, we're proud to be able to go out every week and represent the Germain family with Germain Motor Company on the side of that truck. To be able to come out of here champions, there's nothing better for us to be able to do that for them."

And for Bodine to add a second championship was "validation."

"The first one was definitely the monkey off the back, so to speak, for myself," Bodine said. "That was a lot of years of racing and never getting it, even for my family to never have gotten it.

"... You win the first one, you can luck up, get some wins and score the most points and win the championship. Anybody can do that once in a while. So to come back four years later and do it again and do it even more dominating, that was validation for us."

When asked to compare his two titles, Bodine said consistency was the real key to his dominating 2010 performance.

"[In 2006], we ran well, we won races, but we weren't as consistent every single week having that top-five truck," Bodine said. "You know, [we were] still somewhat in the learning stages of what we needed to do with our trucks and how we needed to adjust them.

"This year -- with just a few minor hiccups -- we had a top-five truck every week. And to be that consistent, that's pretty incredible in any division. I don't care if you're running street stocks at your local short track. To be able to do that week-in and week-out says a lot for the team."

Bodine gave all the credit to Hillman, who suffered serious injuries in a pit road accident at New Hampshire in September, engineer Tom Ackerman, and the rest of the crew.

"We've had this team together for five years now and never finished below fourth in points, consistently winning, consistently up front," Bodine said. "Even in the bad year we had [last year], we still ran up front and won a couple races. It shows the character of this team and what it's about to be able to do this year-in and year-out, this consistently. It shows the character of what we're all about, and [that we] never give up."

It also helped that the economy turned around just enough for the Germains to feel more comfortable sinking more cash into the operation.

"We wanted to get in there and we wanted to build some new trucks," Bob Germain said. "We raced some old trucks in 2008 and 2009 and we were fairly good, but we really felt that in 2010 the automobile business was getting a little bit better. We felt that the worst was over for Germain Motor Company and that we had weathered the storm and started selling cars again.

"From that point, Todd, Mike Jr. and the guys just took over and got it done."

Steve Germain gave the past 10 months a bit of perspective.

"I've never seen a team so determined and work so hard to win a championship," he said. "I'm really proud of our team and appreciate everything they've done. They were on a mission this year, and guess what? Mission accomplished."

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