"FINISHING UP FRONT            
'COOL' FOR BENSON"                   

Published, in edited form, in the Johnson County (Ind.) Daily Journal, Aug. 6, 2001 ©

         No one expected Johnny Benson to come from 26th starting position in Sunday's Brickyard 400 and finish directly behind winner Jeff Gordon and runnerup Sterling Marlin.

         Least of all, Johnny Benson. The 6-foot NASCAR veteran from Grand Rapids, Mich., one of the more talkative and loquacious drivers around, wasn't going to be able to talk or drive his way to the front, it appeared, as he was still mired down in 26th well into the second half of the annual Winston Cup event at Indy.

         "Oh, man, I'll tell you what," said Sunday's show horse, sweat streaking his middle-American face like small waterways across a Michigan map, "you couldn't have a worse day than we had. At the start of the day, we couldn't hit nuthin'. We went from one extreme to the next and couldn't ever get a handle on it."

         But the low expectations got increasingly higher after Benson's last two pit stops in the silver-and-red No. 10 MBV Motorsports Pontiac. Especially the final one, when crew chief James Ince and his pit crew fueled the car and replaced only the two outside tires - the same strategy that clicked for winner Gordon - and gained more positions than even a motivational guru could have inspired.

         "It was that or nuthin'," Benson said of the crucial call that pushed him all the way up to third on the track with 20 laps to go. "We needed to get gas and decided to put two tires on while we were doing it.

         "The car wasn't any good, so we came in here and made a couple of changes and went out on two tires. The guys did a great pit stop, and it worked out really good."

         That made Benson the unexpected heir apparent to his best-ever Brickyard finish, if he could make it hold up and hold off the competitors who put on four fresh tires in the final round of pit stops, like earlier leaders Steve Park and Tony Stewart. "It was gonna hold up if the driver didn't hit nuthin'!" he noted, flashing a wide smile that made the streams of sweat look more like cool spring water. "He didn't, so it ended up fine."

         But it wasn't easily done for the 38-year-old Michigander who almost won the Brickyard race as a rookie in 1998 but ended up eighth. "I was drivin' my butt off at the end," he pointed out after his sixth and best 400. "I was doin' everything I could not to wreck it at the same time.

         "We weren't quite as good as what we needed to be, but good enough to be able to maintain third. I don't know if I'd been able to pass anybody, but maybe, if I'd caught Sterling, I'd have got by him. I'll never know because I ran out of laps."

         The unlikely outcome left Benson telling anyone who would listen just how "awesome" and "neat" and "cool" his race had been, along with a mouthful of similarly enthusiastic adjectives. And he gave all or most of the credit to Ince and his crew. "James made some incredible calls, and everybody on the crew just did some awesome changes all day long," Benson said, the awe as thick as swamp water in his voice.

         "We went from so bad tight to so bad loose, and I don't know why. When we had it where the car was fast, then I couldn't drive it; then when we got it to where I could drive it, it wasn't fast."

         "We kept chasing it all day long, the guys kept diggin' and kept workin', and finally we started hitting it near the end. James and the guys did a tremendous job, made changes on the race car I didn't think were possible under caution, stuff that takes over half a lap to do, so it was awesome."

         The fact that the surprising reversal of fortune came on the low-banked Indy oval was probably part of the Benson equation Sunday, too, since he cut his racing teeth on the short, flat speedways around Grand Rapids.

         "I don't know if I like the flat tracks as much; I just seem to run well on them," said the racer who also finished third at the steeply banked Texas Motor Speedway earlier this season. "You've got to like slidin' around because there were a lot of people doin' that today.

         "It was just who could slide it the best and not hit anything that ended up upfront."

         Even the paint scheme and images of Indiana-born actor James Dean on the side of his car - part of a promotion of a new Dean film biography and the annual September tribute to Dean in his hometown of Fairmount - were recipients of some of Benson's ample post-race supply of exuberance and accompanying adjectives. "That's pretty cool, being able to sport James Dean Pontiac colors for this race here in Indiana, his home state," he went on.

         "And we made some more money for Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America; that's a pretty neat deal for us, too," he added, referring to a charitable connection with his Valvoline-sponsored stock car.

         But, in the end, unexpected or not, charitable or not, it was hard for Johnny Benson not to get enthused about the treasure he found at the end of his long, hard hunt Sunday. "I'll tell you what, it was a long day," he said, another smile breaking out on his face like a new river of summertime sweat. "My God, the car was a handful all day.

         "But, for us to come from 26th and run as bad as we did and then get back up to the front, we're pretty happy with how things went."

----------

 Copyright 2001 by Jerry Miller ©

 Color photo courtesy of Indianapolis Motor Speedway

 Return to Writings page