Truck champion 'curse' plaguing Bodine in '11

For all that went right for Todd Bodine last season in the Camping World Truck Series, about as much has already gone wrong for the reigning series champion in 2011.

Bodine, seeking to become the first driver to claim consecutive Truck titles, finds himself in a huge hole seven races into the season.

The two-time champion has one top-10 finish, has led all of two laps and is a distant 11th in the standings.

Such statistics would have been virtually unfathomable in the preseason for a driver who rolled up 20 top-10s, including four victories, en route to rendering last year's title fight little more than a snooze-fest.

But as Bodine points out, reigning truck champs don't customarily have it easy.

Case in point: 2009 champ Ron Hornaday, who slipped all the way to seventh last year.

"For whatever reason, it's kind of a Truck champion curse, I guess, that you come back the next season and have a lot of bad luck because Hornaday did it last year, the same thing, and we're having the same type of year this year," Bodine said.

As the Truck Series prepares for Saturday's O'Reilly Auto Parts 250 at Kansas Speedway (2 p.m. ET, SPEED), Bodine and his Germain Racing team continue their quest to recapture their former magic.

Bodine's best finish of 2011 is a third at Darlington in March. He has no other finish better than 14th, including two DNFs -- one for a crash at Daytona and another for an ignition problem at Dover.

Bodine was involved in an early wreck last week at Charlotte and limped home 27th.

"It's a lot easier for a rookie to come in here and get shook up and think that he's doing something wrong, and you just can't let that happen," said Bodine, 47, a veteran of 172 starts. "It will bury your confidence, and that's just as bad as having bad luck. Then things just seem to go wrong no matter what you're doing. You've just got to keep digging and not let it bother you."

Bodine doesn't attribute this year's results to his trucks, crew chief Mike Hillman Jr. or his team.

"If there's nobody to blame, you can't just lay blame," Bodine said. "A motor blowing up, a part failure on the motor, that's nobody's fault. It just happens."

Bodine isn't losing any sleep about being 78 points behind leader Cole Whitt and needing a major turnaround to repeat as champion. He's just focused on collecting as many points as possible -- and getting back to Victory Lane.

His record at Kansas Speedway, a fast 1.5-mile track, provides hope: He finished third last year and won there in 2005.

"We expect to win. That's what we go for," Bodine said. "Our mile-and-a-half program has always been really strong, and we go to every race expecting to win and the mile-and-a-halves with a little extra swagger. We know we can run well.

"We've been in this slump and it's been horrible, just terrible luck, and that would be a great place to get out of it."