Brett Bodine

Brett briefly lead the standings after the season's 28th race, and with three races to go (Hickory, Rockingham, and Marintsiville) trailed by 12 points.

Brett qualified on the pole at Hickory but the race was cancelled because, allegedly, the promoter did not want to pay the purse and intentionally damaged the track which cost Brett the chance to gain ground on Pearson.

He also placed 5th in the Northeast Region of the NASCAR Winston Weekly Racing series with 6 wins in 54 starts.

Brett Elias Bodine III (born January 11, 1959) is an American former stock car racing driver, former driver of the pace car in Cup Series events, and current NASCAR employee.

He began in hobby stock races at the Chemung Speedrome (owned by his parents) in 1977.

In 1979 Brett started racing a part-time schedule in the NASCAR Modified Nation Championship series, placing 35th in the final standings.

In the 1980 Brett moved up to 24th in the final standings with a best finish of third at Stafford Motor speedway, still driving a part time schedule.

In 1983 Brett picked up his first national championship win at Stafford Motor Speedway while placing 7th in the final standings.

Between June 1983 and August 1984 Brett won 7 feature races at Stafford and helped his car-owner secure the 1984 Stafford Motor Speedway track championship.

In 1984 Brett picked up another National Championship win, this time at Oxford Maine.

At the conclusion of the 1984 season Brett moved south to go to work for Rick Hendrick, whom his brother Geoff was driving for at the time.

While working for Rick, Brett found time to make a handful of modified starts in 1985 and won the most prestigious event of the season, the Race of Champions at Pocono.

The 1985 season also saw Bodine make his debut in the NASCAR Xfinity Series in the #15 Pontiac at Bristol.

By the end of the 1985 season Brett had made thirteen starts with three poles, three wins, 7 top fives, and 10 top tens.

Bodine's success in the part-time Busch series ride in 1985 lead to a full time opportunity in 1986, driving the No. 00 Thomas Brothers Old Country Ham Oldsmobile for Howard Thomas.

Rick Hendrick was not interested in fielding a full time Busch series team but helped Brett bring an associate sponsorship from Exxon over to the 00 team.

Brett is the younger brother of 1986 Daytona 500 winner Geoff Bodine and the older brother of 2006 and 2010 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion Todd Bodine.

He was born in Chemung, New York.

Brett has been named one of the 50 greatest NASCAR modified drivers of all time, was the runner-up for the 1986 Xfinity Series championship, and collected a total of five Xfinity Series wins and sixteen pole positions.

Brett made 480 Cup series starts with one win and five pole positions.

He has led over 1,000 career laps in both the NASCAR Cup series and the NASCAR Xfinity series.

Bodine attended Alfred State College and received an associate's degree in mechanical engineering before he became a professional race car driver.

Brett picked up his first pole of 1986 in the second race of the season at Rockingham, leading 18 laps before falling out with mechanical trouble.

Brett picked up his second pole of the season at Martinsville and lead the first 21 laps before getting hit by Kyle Petty while working lapped traffic and then taken out in a second incident later in the race.

In addition to his full time Xfinity Series schedule, Bodine made four modified starts in 1986, winning two, both of which were NASCAR Modified National Championship events held at Martinsville.

Bodine also made his Winston Cup Debut in 1986, driving the No. 2 Exxon Chevy in the Coca-Cola 600.

Brett then recorded 9 straight top 10 finishes and another pole at Dover to move to 2nd in the points standings.

He also placed 12th in the Northeast Region of the NASCAR Winston Weekly Racing series with 3 wins in 37 starts.

The small team did not have a pit crew and had to do the whole race on a single set of tires but Brett managed to qualify 7th and finish 12th in his debut race.

Brett's breakout race in NASCAR came when rain forced a scheduling conflict between the Xfinity race at Martinsville and the Cup Series race.

Geoff Bodine (who was driving full-time for Hendrick in the Cup Series)  was scheduled to drive in the Xfinity race and Brett got the chance to drive Rick Hendrick's #5 Pontiac as a last minute fill-in.

Brett started second and won the race in only his second career start.

This was the first win for Hendrick with the Levi Garrett sponsorship and resulted in Brett getting funding from Levi Garrett to run 11 additional races that season.

Brett's under the lights win at Bristol win was the first Xfinity series race to be televised live in prime time.

Three DNFs in the season's first 5 races left Brett 14th in points.

This streak was followed by back to back DNFs at IRP and South Boston and dropped Brett to 7th in points after the season's 16th race.

Brett rallied to finish the season with 15 straight top 10 finishes including wins at Bristol and the season finale at Martinsville.

After Jack Ingram was suspended for two races for driving backwards on track, the championship came down to a battle between Brett and Larry Pearson.

At the season finale, Brett qualified on pole and won the race but ended up placing 2nd to Larry Pearson by just 7 points in the final standings while totaling 16 top fives and 24 top tens to go along with his series-best 8 pole positions.

Brett was voted the series most popular driver at the conclusion of the season.