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 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. Bodine has been named one of the 50 greatest NASCAR modified drivers of all time, was the runner-up for the 1986 Busch Series championship, and collected a total of five Busch Series wins and sixteen pole positions. Bodine made 480 Cup Series starts with one win and five pole positions. He has led over one-thousand career laps in both the NASCAR Winston Cup Series and the NASCAR Busch Series.
Bodine attended Alfred State College and received an associate's degree in mechanical engineering before he became a professional race car driver. He began in hobby stock races at the Chemung Speedrome (owned by his parents) in 1977. In 1979, he started racing a part-time schedule in the NASCAR Modified Nation Championship series, placing 35th in the final standings. In 1980, Bodine 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, Bodine picked up his first national championship win at Stafford Motor Speedway while placing seventh in the final standings. He also placed fifth in the Northeast Region of the NASCAR Winston Weekly Racing series with six wins in 54 starts. In 1984, he picked up another National Championship win, this time at Oxford Maine. He also placed twelfth in the Northeast Region of the NASCAR Winston Weekly Racing series with three wins in 37 starts. Between June 1983 and August 1984, he won seven feature races at Stafford and helped his car-owner secure the 1984 Stafford Motor Speedway track championship. At the conclusion of the 1984 season, Bodine moved south to go to work for Rick Hendrick, whom his brother Geoff was driving for at the time.
While working for Hendrick, Bodine 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 Busch Series in the No. 15 Pontiac at Bristol. The small team did not have a pit crew and had to do the whole race on a single set of tires but he managed to qualify seventh and finish twelfth in his debut race. Bodine's breakout race in NASCAR came when rain forced a scheduling conflict between the Busch Series 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 Busch Series race and Bodine got the chance to drive Rick Hendrick's No. 5 Pontiac as a last minute fill-in. Bodine 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 Bodine getting funding from Levi Garrett to run eleven additional races that season. His under the lights win at Bristol win was the first Xfinity series race to be televised live in prime time. By the end of the 1985 season, Bodine had made thirteen starts with three poles, three wins, seven top-fives, and ten 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. Hendrick was not interested in fielding a full-time Busch Series team but helped Bodine bring an associate sponsorship from Exxon over to the 00 team. He picked up his first pole of 1986 in the second race of the season at Rockingham, leading eighteen laps before falling out with mechanical trouble. Bodine 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. Three DNFs in the season's first five races left Bodine fourteenth in points. Bodine then recorded nine straight top-ten finishes and another pole at Dover to move to second in the points standings. This streak was followed by back to back DNFs at IRP and South Boston and dropped Bodine to seventh in points after the season's sixteenth race. Bodine rallied to finish the season with fifteen straight top-ten 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 Bodine and Larry Pearson. Bodine briefly lead the standings after the season's 28th race, and with three races to go (Hickory, Rockingham, and Martinsville) trailed by twelve points. Bodine 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 Bodine the chance to gain ground on Pearson. At the season finale, Bodine qualified on pole and won the race but ended up placing second to Pearson by just seven points in the final standings while totaling sixteen top-fives and 24 top-tens to go along with his series-best eight pole positions. Bodine was voted the series most popular driver at the conclusion of the season. In addition to his full time Busch Series schedule, He made four modified starts in 1986, winning two, both of which were NASCAR Modified National Championship events held at Martinsville. Bodine also made his NASCAR Winston Cup Series debut in 1986, driving the No. 2 Exxon Chevy in the Coca-Cola 600. Bodine started 32nd and finished eighteenth in the Rick Hendrick owned entry, earning the bonus money for being the highest finishing rookie driver.
Bodine again drove the full Busch series schedule in the No. 00 Oldsmobile in 1987. Although he failed to find victory lane, he accumulated five poles, eight top-fives, seventeen top-tens, and finished third in the championship. In May for the seventh Cup Series race of the season at North Wilksboro, Bodine was chosen to replace the injured Terry Labonte on the pace lap in Junior Johnson's No. 11 Budweiser Chevy. Despite starting from the rear of the field after the driver change, he managed to finish in eighth place. Bodine also replaced Labonte on the pace laps the next week at Bristol. Again starting from the rear of the field, Bodine ran as high as second and finished in ninth place. While Labonte is credited with the finishes due to the NASCAR rules regarding driver changes at the time, Bodine's success as a fill-in driver lead to a ride for fourteen Cup races in Hoss Ellington's part time No. 1 Bulls-Eye Barbecue Sauce Chevy. In Bodine's first event with the Ellington team, he qualified on pole for the Winston Open and placed sixth. He returned to Charlotte the next weekend and qualified ninth for the 600 and led seventeen laps (the first Cup laps lead of his career) but was collected in a wreck while running in the top-ten and eventually fell out of the race with an engine issue. At Daytona, Bodine qualified seventh, lead a lap, and finished a season-best eleventh, the first lead lap finish of his Cup career. For the season, he had five top-ten qualifying efforts in the No. 1 car and five top-twenty finishes.
In 1988, Bodine moved to the Cup Series full-time for Bud Moore Engineering driving the No. 15 Crisco Thunderbird. In the fourth race of the season at Atlanta, he qualified fifth and finished ninth, recording his first top-ten finish. In the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, Bodine led the race five times for a total of 96 laps collecting both the half way leader bonus and the hard charger bonus money. His car dropped a cylinder late in the race and he held on to finish fourth (the first top-five finish of his career). In the Oakwood Homes 500, also at Charlotte, Bodine led the race three times for a total of fifty laps before getting passed for the lead by race winner Rusty Wallace with twelve laps to go and ultimately finishing third. The team was plagued by engine issues all season, falling out of races seven times while fighting through engine issues in others. For the season Bodine posted five top-ten finishes and finished twentieth in points. He was not eligible for the Rookie of the Year award in 1988 (which was won by Ken Bouchard who finished 25th in points with one top-ten) as he had run too many races as a part-time driver in 1987.