Benson Duels His Way To 3rd-Place At Texas
Benson Duels His Way To 3rd-Place At Texas Leads Final Laps Before Giving Way To Cars With New Tires
As Eagle One Pontiac driver Johnny Benson adjusted his seatbelts and mashed the gas to clear out his 750-horsepower engine getting ready for the restart at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday his 20-crew members, the 200,000 fans in the stands, and millions watching on national television wondered if he could pull it off.
His Valvoline Racing Crew Chief James Ince knew the task ahead and gave his race-leading driver a few last-second words of encouragement.
“OK Hero, this is your deal now,” Ince said over the team radio as the scoreboard showed there were just 18 laps left before the checkered flag flew. “No matter what happens in this deal we are here with you man. You’ve drove a heck a race today. Let’s see if we can bring it home.”
Benson responded:
“I’ll do what I can guys,” he said with a mixture of confidence and apprehension. “I don’t know if we can hold them off, but we’ll run the wheels of this car.”
And he did, with almost miraculous results.
When the green flag flew, Benson began an 18-lap journey trying to fend off the 20 or so freshly shod cars that were on the lead lap and desperately rumbling to the front of the field. Everyone wanted the lead but they were going to have to take it away from Benson.
Benson inherited the lead when he and Ince decided to forego a final pit stop as the rest of the leaders visited pit road. While the move propelled him from ninth to first gaining valuable track position it put him at a disadvantage to the cars behind.
Those cars with new tires were sure to eat up Benson’s lead in mere seconds. But it turned out to be a lot more exciting than anyone expected.
Benson jumped on the gas as soon as the green flag fell and maintained the lead as the pack roared into the first turn. By the time he drove by the pits again he had increased his lead by several car lengths and the laps started to slowly come off the scoreboard.
Time was the only thing standing between Benson and his first career victory.
A few laps later the war began as Jeff Gordon tried to draw along side several times but couldn’t manage to pull ahead. Kurt Busch also gave it his best shot but failed to pass the black Eagle One Pontiac.
More laps ticked off the scoreboard.
With 10 laps to go, Benson’s nemesis from the past loomed in his rear view mirror. Dale Jarrett had just dispatched both Gordon and Busch and set his sights on Benson - reminiscent of last year’s Daytona 500 when Jarrett led a Ford freight train past Benson’s then unsponsored car in the final three laps spoiling what would have been one of the sport’s greatest upset victories.
“I really didn’t think about Daytona as I saw Dale Coming,” Benson said after the race. “I just knew he and (Steve) Park had new tires and I was going to do my best to make them work to pass me. As fast as they were coming I didn’t want them to run over me and ruin our day. But I wasn’t about to let them by either.”
Jarrett narrowed the gap as another lap or two came off the scoreboard.
“Make sure you run the inside lane and then push him near the wall when you come off the corner,” advised Ince as he watched the duel on the track’s jumbo television screen.
Benson followed Ince’s advice and held Jarrett off, but the former Winston Cup champion finally slipped past Benson with just eight laps left in the 334-lap race.
The war wasn’t over.
Steve Park and Benson waged a similar wheel-to-wheel dual that ended when Park, with his fresh tires, also drove by the #10 car. Benson might have lost out to Jarrett and Park but wasn’t about to let another pass. He and Kurt Busch battled, but Benson managed to pull away on the final lap and take a hard-earned third-place place finish.
The performance moved him to third in the 2001 driver point standings behind Jarrett who won the race and Jeff Gordon who finished fifth. Park finished second and Busch finished fourth on Sunday.
“I really didn’t know what was going to happen there at the end,” laughed Benson. “We try to make it exciting for the fans and the Valvoline folks every time we come to a race and I think we did just that today.”
Benson said the end-of-the-race strategy was as much about common sense as it was with gambling.
“If we had come in and put on tires and gone back out ninth I’m not sure we would have climbed any higher than sixth so we said what the heck we are here to win and let’s go for it.”
Benson said he knows that first victory isn’t far away.
“No we aren’t disappointed today,” he said. “We know that if we keep running like this it will come. We are third in points and that is pretty impressive. We are feeling really good about ourselves now.”
Benson started Sunday’s race in 17th and began a steady march to the front once the green flag fell. He moved to tenth by lap 20 and led a lap early in the race when he and Ince elected a two-tire stop while others took on four new tires. When the pit strategies were the same, Benson appeared to be about the sixth quickest car on the track and was running ninth when he implemented the end of the race strategy.
Benson and his Valvoline Racing teammates return to action Sunday at the flat half-mile track in Martinsville, Va.
2001 Standings
Dale Jarrett 1051 2 Jeff Gordon 981 3 Johnny Benson 946 4 Steve Park 938 5 Sterling Marlin 884 6 Rusty Wallace 879 7 Bobby Hamilton 825 8 Elliott Sadler 824 9 Bill Elliott 822 10 Kevin Harvick * 811
The Following Benson and Ince Quotes As Distributed By Pontiac and Given To Valvoline Racing As A Courtesy of Pontiac Racing.
JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 EAGLE ONE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: (ON STAYING OUT ON THE LAST STOP TO TRY TO WIN THE RACE) "We were running about ninth and we knew we weren't going to beat them from there. We knew that (staying out) was our best opportunity. We really couldn't do anything else. We weren't able to come from the back, so we took the gamble. James [Ince] said, 'What do you think? Do you want to stay out?' I said, 'Yeah, let's go for it,' and I stayed out. "I knew the guys on four tires were coming. I thought maybe I could hold off the guys with two tires. I didn't think I could hold anybody off with four tires and that ended up proving to be the case. " I was kind of hoping that they would get to racing behind us. That was helping me, but eventually they got by us. They went by me like I was standing still. "Right at the end, it was probably as good as it had been all day. We ran eighth or ninth - right in that area - but couldn't go forward, so it was the right choice for us, just to stay out. It allowed us to lead some laps and gave us an opportunity to try and steal it, and we ended up third. We're extremely how we've been running and real happy how the team has been doing." (ON RACING TO WIN) "Absolutely. That is what we're here for and that's what we're trying to do. If we had come in, put tires on it and come out eighth or ninth, if the car had been really good I might have gotten to sixth. We were having a hard time moving forward, so it was the right move. We had seen that people staying out could almost hold their own up front. Track position is extremely premium nowadays. Like everybody has said, if you get behind somebody you get such an aero push that it's very difficult. "We just thought we'd take the gamble. I didn't feel we had anything to lose because we could have fallen back nine spots and been right where I was. We were just going to go for the win and hope that these guys got to running side-by-side. It just didn't quite pay off. But we finished in the top five and I think any time we can run in the top five, a win should be right around the corner." (ON THE PRIDE HE HAS IN HIS TEAM) "I'm really proud of all the guys that work on this Valvoline and Eagle One Pontiac. The guys are working hard. I'm real confident in James Ince, Gary Putnam, Tim Turner - everybody at the shop. Those guys are working so hard. I appreciate it, and I go in there enough to have some fun when I'm there, too." (IS THIS A TURNING POINT IN THE SEASON?) "No. It's not a turning point, by any means. We've been running good all year long. I would just like to win one of these once. But all in all, I'm real happy. I'm just real excited how everybody has come together."
JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 EAGLE ONE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: (IS A WIN RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER?) "Well, I've been thinking that for awhile. It seems to be right in front of us. I'm hoping the day that we do break through, it will come a little easier. I doubt it, but I can hope. This first one just seems to be tough." [ON BOTH HE AND HIS TEAMMATE (KEN SCHRADER) FINISHING IN THE TOP 10)] "We're real excited. Everybody is just trying to make the most of our opportunities, and run the best that we can." (ON THE AERO PUSH YOU EXPERIENCE BEHIND SOMEONE) "You need to get a good balance. If you're good up front, you're going to be tight behind somebody. If you get it where you're really good behind somebody, there is a good chance that you're going to be real loose up front. We played both sides of the fence. We got the car where it was loose, we got it where it was tight and never got it perfect. I think at the end I was as good as I had been, as far as the balance of the race car, but wasn't fast enough to beat anybody with tires. "I think everybody had the same problem. We saw it following people. When they were tight up against somebody they had a hard time coming up off the corner. You could see a lot of guys getting runs on people when that was happening or when guys got side-by-side. Even when you were down at the bottom trying to pass somebody, the thing would aero-push bad. You're doing 190 miles per hour and you're doing over 180 coming up off the corners. Aero is a big part." (DID THIS REMIND YOU OF LAST YEAR'S DAYTONA 500?) "No. I didn't get hit this time. He (Dale Jarrett) had four tires. He could probably run anywhere he wanted. I knew I had to stay on the bottom because if would have gotten up into the top groove, the world would have gone by. I just made sure to stay on the bottom. I saw the '88' coming. He was coming fast. I didn't even challenge him for the lead. I did what I could to run as fast as I could, but I wasn't going to try to block him. He would have run me over. And the same with Steve [Park] - when Steve was coming, he was coming hard. They had the good tires, so I let them go around the outside just to save me from having any other problems and other guys getting runs on us. It enabled us to come out of here third with the Eagle One Pontiac." (IS IT STILL A ONE-GROOVE RACETRACK?) "I couldn't run the top most of the day. I had to stay on the bottom. There really wasn't a top [groove], but some of the guys ventured up there. You could on some of the restarts when your tires were good. But as the tires got old it was very difficult for us. Some of the people were able to run up there, but I think most of the time everybody stayed on the bottom."
JAMES INCE, CREW CHIEF, NO. 10 EAGLE ONE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: (ON HANGING IT ALL OUT AT THE END) "It's just a situation where we're always going to hang it out. It's not because we want to, it's just that we want to win one of these things so damn bad. It's not that the sponsors are putting pressure on us or the owners are putting pressure on us. We, as a race team, want to win one of these races. I've got all the faith in the world in Johnny Benson. When it's time to stand up on the wheel, he can do that. We had a good car. We just had to be out front with it to try to do what we needed to get done." (WAS STAYING OUT A DIFFICULT CALL TO MAKE?) "No, it's not a hard call to make. We've got so much faith in each other that we can't make a wrong call because we'll support each other on whatever we do here. "I was gambling three positions for a win. I think we came out seven or eight spots ahead of where we would have finished, so it's not a hard call. This race team is awfully strong. This race team is awesome. These guys all do a good job. Gary Putnam does his job. Johnny does his job. All the guys at the shop do their's. We're just trying to win one." (DID YOU HAVE TO SELL JOHNNY ON THE IDEA OF STAYING OUT?) "It seems like I've had more opportunities to try to sell him ideas. It started at the Daytona 500 last year. He decided he couldn't win and then he saw that maybe he could. "He is a lot easier to get pumped up now. He is not willing to give one away with 15 or 20 laps to go. He is going to sit up and drive it." (COULD YOU HAVE MADE THAT CALL A YEAR AGO WITH LAST YEAR'S TIRE?) "I don't know. We probably would have tried it. This is the first race I've ever finished at Texas, so I couldn't have told you anything about this race. It was kind of a hard day for me because I had never been past halfway to understand what race strategy would be. Everything today, to me as a crew chief, was very new, but we're always going to do whatever we've got to do to try to win one." (ON HAVING A GOOD POINTS DAY) "That's always a plus on top of everything else. It matter in the back of our minds, but boy, do we want to win."
Drew Brown 1335 Torrence Circle Davidson, NC 28036 704-895-3651 H 704-906-7992 C drew_brown@mindspring.com