Full Throttle

BRISTOL, Tenn. - Mike Skinner led all but 10 laps and won in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series for the first time since 1996 by turning back a late challenge from Todd Bodine on Wednesday night.

Former champion Skinner, who left in 1997 to race in the Nextel Cup Series and returned last year to compete full time in the trucks, won for the 17th time on the circuit.

“What a motor in this thing,” Skinner said after giving owner Bill Davis his first victory in the series.

Using lapped traffic to his advantage, Bodine ran down Skinner with 18 laps remaining in the O’Reilly 200 at Bristol Motor Speedway. Then series points leader Dennis Setzer brought out a caution when he crashed on the 187th lap.

But Skinner held off Bodine when the green flag waved on lap 195.

NASCAR, Auto Racing, Craftsman Truck Series

“We were good on restarts all night, and I thought if we could get out there we could hold him off,” Skinner said of Bodine.

Skinner was happy to see the cautions.

“I knew if this thing stayed green, Todd would have had a shot,” he said.

Bodine agreed.

“If that caution hadn’t come out, we had something for Mike,” said Bodine, who started 32nd in the 36-truck field but used an early pit stop strategy to gain track position he never relinquished. “It was a pretty awesome run.”

Skinner had to persevere when his right front tire began to blister late in the race on the high banking of the half-mile concrete oval. “At the end, I was glad that I had slowed down to save the tires,” he said.

By Bristol standards, the race was a tame affair with six caution flags slowing the race for just 34 of the 200 laps. Accidents hurt two of the series championship contenders. Setzer’s lead dropped to 143 points over Ted Musgrave after he slapping the outside wall and wound up 16th.

Reigning series champion Bobby Hamilton was involved in a five-truck accident at lap 81. Still, he held his third position, but is 257 points behind Setzer with eight races remaining.

Skinner, the 1995 series champion from California, has run well often this season, been bad luck had kept him from winning. He came into the race with five fourth-place finishes, and the victory enabled him to end a 53-race winless streak.

“This race team deserved five or six of these by now,” he said. “It’s never easy to win in this series.”

Skinner, who averaged 83.390 mph, beat Bodine by 1.667 seconds — about four truck lengths — in a battle of Toyotas.

Jack Sprague, another former series champion, wound up third in a Chevrolet. Johnny Benson finished fourth in a Toyota, followed by the Chevy of Kyle Busch.

Jimmy Spencer, David Starr, Mike Wallace and Ken Schrader completed the top 10.