Monday, Sept. 27, 2004 | 9:27 a.m.
Since winning at Nashville in August, Bobby Hamilton has seen his Craftsman Truck Series points lead dwindle with each finish out of the top 10.
When he finished 25th at Richmond, his lead slipped from 96 to 57. After a 15th-place finish at dark, rain-soaked New Hampshire, Hamilton's lead was down to 30 points. Midway through the Las Vegas 350 Saturday night at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, it was starting to look like another rough night for the Square-D Dodge.
Debris on the grille forced Hamilton to race conservatively, pushing him as far back as 25th place by lap 50, before recovering for a fifth-place finish and opening up a 39-point lead over seventh-finishing Dennis Setzer, with six races remaining on the 2004 schedule.
"They kept working on the chassis, and it was really good at the end," Hamilton said. "I think we were a second-place truck there at the end, but we just didn't have track position."
Hamilton's race from the back half of the field of 36 was capped only by the shootout between Todd Bodine and Shane Hmiel through the final six laps of the 146-lap race.
Bodine had led since lap 117, with Hmiel running in fifth. But at lap 140, Hmiel caught Bodine thanks to some fresher tires and a little help from lap traffic on the way to winning the race.
Hmiel tried a high line and a low line to try to get past Bodine, but by lap 145, the first-year Craftsman Truck Series driver gave up and tried the same line.
"Shane gave me a little bump to get around, but that's OK," Bodine said. "They've worked really hard and deserve to win this race. I'm not going to complain because Shane got in the back of me -- that's just racing and it was fun tonight. I'm happy for Shane and his team."
To say Hmiel had waited a long time for a win was an understatement. In two years as a NASCAR Busch Series driver, and more than three-quarters of this season in the truck series, Hmiel had 25 top 10s, but no wins. Twice this year -- at Bristol and Memphis -- Hmiel finished second, and his previous win was in his Rookie of the Year season in the Goody's Dash NASCAR regional series, in 2001.
"I didn't know if I could catch him (Bodine), but I knew I could get second. Once I got to second I said to myself, I wasn't leaving here not winning this race," he said. "We had come close too many times so I just kept digging and once I got up to him, there wasn't many laps left, so I gave him just a little bump."
Two laps later, Hmiel was alone on the tracks, burning rubber and tossing his race helmet at the crowd estimated at 80,000 in celebration. A group of fans ran down to grab the helmet, which landed in an area of empty seats cordoned off because the track's insurance policy wouldn't permit fans to sit that close to the track with the faster Champ Car World Series race following the trucks in the night's doubleheader.
In a news conference afterward, Hmiel was exuberant.
"I promised myself I would buy myself a diamond Rolex when I won my first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, and I am going to do that tomorrow," he said. "I'm so happy that a fan has my helmet from my first win and if they can get in touch with me, I will send them a hat or a T-shirt and anything else that I can."
The win also came one year and one week after Hmiel was suspended by NASCAR for violating its substance abuse policy.
"I'm in the best shape of my racing career," Hmiel said. "I like talking about how I have overcome the problem I had with drugs, because I think it makes it better and easier for others to know they can do it too."
Steve Park, driving for the Orleans Racing team based in Las Vegas, finished third and led the most laps Saturday. Since the majority of last year's Orleans team, including driver Brendan Gaughan, moved up to the Nextel Cup, Park's team has made steady progress through the season. Only two members of Park's team were holdovers from last year's group that won the Las Vegas truck race with Gaughan.
Park's best finishes this season, until Saturday's third-place finish, were back-to-back fourths at Milwaukee and Kansas.
"We're just building the team up personnel-wise and people-wise to where it needs to be to get back to winning races again," Park said. "Just a month or two ago, we were struggling hard in the pits. I can remember coming in second in Kentucky and coming out 15th a couple of times. We knew we were never going to win a race like that, so these guys have stepped up to the program."
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