Benson Saves Best For Last At Brickyard
Benson Saves Best For Last At Brickyard Drives James Dean Pontiac To 3rd-Place Finish Valvoline Pontiac driver Johnny Benson carried a picture of movie star James Dean on the hood of his car all weekend at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But it was his work in the final scene that would have made the legendary Hoosier actor proud as Benson dazzled the 300,000 members of the audience with a scene-stealing performance in the closing laps of one of NASCAR’s biggest shows. After spending much of the day racing midpack, Benson and Crew Chief James Ince tricked the field during the final round of pit stops. While others were taking on four tires for the final 21-lap run, Benson and Ince decided two would be enough for their needs. They were right. “I think this will get you the track position you need and you can do the rest,” Ince told Benson when he moved the driver from 14th to fourth during the final pit stop with just 21 laps left in the 400-mile race. It was Benson’s first time in the top ten all day, but it didn’t take him long to take advantage of the new view of the leaders. From there Benson wheeled around Ricky Craven for third place then held off a hard charging Rusty Wallace while falling just short of catching Sterling Marlin and eventual winner Jeff Gordon. Several of the faster cars that had traded the lead all day and took four tires on the final stop couldn’t catch up before the checkered flag fell. Finishing third at the Brickyard wasn’t as simple as making a good call in the final laps. After starting the race in 26th, Benson reported a variety of troubles to Ince. “We were changing so many things that it would probably be easier to tell you what we didn’t change,” joked Benson. “We started off real tight and made some pretty substantial changes and ended up getting it loose.” Benson’s first pit stop saw a radio malfunction lead to a tire changer start taking the lug nuts on the left side of the car after the team decided to do a two tire stop. Benson pulled out from the pits a few feet before putting the car in reverse and returning to the pit stall. “That was actually a blessing,” Ince told the team on the radio. Because Benson was going to be at the end of the field when the race restarted, Ince brought the car to pit road again and made some significant chassis changes that improved the handling of the car. “We made a mistake but overcame it and that’s what I wanted to see,” Ince said. “It really did turn out to be a blessing in disguise. By taking that extra time to work on the car we got it running pretty good. I’ll give that up for track position at that stage of the race any time.” Benson spent the rest of the race working his way through the field and taking every advantage to pit in case the race turned into a fuel mileage run at the end. Last week at Pocono, Ince and Benson stretched fuel mileage so long that Benson ran out of gas in the final corner of the race but managed to finish fifth. “I wasn’t going to do that two weeks in a row,” said Ince whose car scored its ninth top-10 finish of the season. “So we decided we could get him in and then live with two tires at the end.” For Benson the dramatic finish was a bit of justice after his 1996 performance on the famed oval when he led 70 laps but saw chances for a top three finish go away on the final pit stop. “I think this race was means more to me because of what all we had to do here today to get into this position,” said Benson who has three top-10 finishes in six Indy starts. “I think we had an opportunity to win in 1996 but to come back here and do what we did today makes me feel pretty good about this race team.” Benson remains 10th in the 2001 driver point standings and returns to action Sunday on the road course in Watkins Glen. 2001 Points Gordon 3027 Jarrett 2867 Rudd 2848 Marlin 2704 Stewart 2703 Wallace 2652 Earnhardt 2592 Labonte 2561 Harvick 2557 Benson 2518 Park 2436 Martin 2422 The following is a transcript of Johnny Benson’s and James Ince’s post-race comments courtesy of Pontiac. JAMES INCE, CREW CHIEF, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: (ON JOHNNY BENSON'S RUN TODAY - YOU SEEMED TO COME FROM NOWHERE TO THE FRONT...) "Maybe we weren't anywhere that anybody noticed. We made a decision last week at Pocono - when we started this race - they've taken some things away from us in the rules that have hurt our race team and at the start of the race we made up our mind that we were going to come fix our race cars. It says we can do it, so that's what we did. We spent the rest of the day adjusting. We moved track bars - we did everything you can touch on a race car to get it right for the end. Lo and behold at the end of the race, they just always seem to let me do to them whatever it is I do to them." (WHEN DID YOU KNOW YOU HAD A THIRD PLACE CAR?) "It was probably after our second pit stop that it was probably that good a car, and again, we still weren't satisfied with that. We kept adjusting and kept adjusting. We were just looking to make it perfect. Things worked out for us. There was a little bit of luck that went into play right there. We had an opportunity, like the '40' car did, to have played out doing one more stop again and doing the gas mileage thing. But, I didn't feel like it. I wasn't going to try that two weeks in a row. We just tried to get some speed in the car and keep ourselves in position." JAMES INCE, CREW CHIEF, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: (TWO TOP FIVES IN A ROW - THE TEAM APPEARS TO BE BACK. WAS IT EVER GONE?) "The team was never gone. Like I said, when they changed those rules at Charlotte on spring rubbers and stuff it killed this race team. There is no way around it. That was something that destroyed this race team and I think that is part of the reason they did it. There were too many that weren't supposed to run good were running good. But, we're figuring it out. A good race team is a good race team. We just figure out what we have to along the way." JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: (HOW DOES THIS YEAR AT THE BRICKYARD COMPARE TO YOUR ROOKIE RUN HERE WHEN YOU LED 70 LAPS AND SCORED A TOP 10?) "I think it was a bigger accomplishment today because we started way in the back and the car started off pretty terrible. With everybody making the changes and the work that they did, this was definitely a good challenge for us to where we finished. "In '96 when we led 70 laps and almost won, I think we had an opportunity to win the race. We just had a little mess-up there in the pits back then and I stalled the car and it kind of hurt us. But this time, we started 26th. To be able to work our way up - and it took us all day - but we were able to keep inching our way forward and making some great changes on the car. I think this race was pretty much all about what the pit crew did and what James Ince and all the guys [did]." (WHAT CHANGES DID YOU MAKE DURING THE DAY?) "We started off pretty tight and it looked like a lot of people were doing the same thing, so we started putting rubbers in the springs, trying to free things up. Then for whatever reason it went from one extreme to the next. We ran really good for about eight or ten laps. Then the next thing I know, I'm sliding like a dirt track trying to go backwards. We just worked, worked, worked and they started adjusting on the track bars and trying to do other adjustments - stuff that took a long time to do - nothing easy. But the Valvoline team just did a tremendous job and worked hard. James Ince made some great calls. For us to come from 26th and run as bad as we did and then get back up to the front, we were pretty happy with how things went." (WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS TRACK THAT SEEMS TO SUIT YOUR DRIVING ABILITY?) "I don't know if I like the flat tracks as much; I just seem to run well on them. This racetrack is a momentum track. It's a finesse track. The car has got to have a good balance to it and you've got to like sliding around because there were a lot of people doing that today. It was just who could slide it the best and not hitting anything ended up up front. "We have a good program on the flat tracks. It took us a little longer this weekend to get where we really wanted the race car to be, but like I said, outside that, once we got it going the James Dean Pontiac was pretty good. We just kept working and kept working. I still wasn't real happy at the end with how the car was driving. But I knew track position was going to be good. We only took two tires and just hung on from there." JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: (HOW DOES THIS YEAR AT THE BRICKYARD COMPARE TO YOUR ROOKIE RUN HERE WHEN YOU LED 70 LAPS AND SCORED A TOP 10?) "I think it was a bigger accomplishment today because we started way in the back and the car started off pretty terrible. With everybody making the changes and the work that they did, this was definitely a good challenge for us to where we finished. "In '96 when we led 70 laps and almost won, I think we had an opportunity to win the race. We just had a little mess-up there in the pits back then and I stalled the car and it kind of hurt us. But this time, we started 26th. To be able to work our way up - and it took us all day - but we were able to keep inching our way forward and making some great changes on the car. I think this race was pretty much all about what the pit crew did and what James Ince and all the guys [did]." JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 VALVOLINE PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: (ON FLAT TRACKS) "I think most of us drivers in this series grew up on flat tracks. But the type of track that I grew up on (Berlin Raceway) was, I feel, one of the hardest ones in the country. It's flat, it's kind of round, it's extremely fast and it's a deal where finesse is a thing. And like I said, I think all the drivers are great on these type of racetracks. It just sometimes takes the whole package to get it comfortable and get it to where you can drive it around here." (TWO TOP FIVES IN A ROW...WHAT HAS THE TEAM DONE TO REBOUND?) "I think, as you'll see, a lot of the teams over the winter and as the races started going - everybody was geared up to run bump stops and geared up to run those type of scenarios. We did all of our testing that way. Of course, when NASCAR changed that I think it helped the Fords more than anything because they came on pretty strong and they were getting hard to beat and it put us behind. We had to work extra hard to get back up to where we were and it has been a struggle. It's been a struggle to try to figure that out and try to work that way to get it as good as what we were at the beginning of the season. We feel like we were heading in a direction and then it didn't work. Now we feel like we're heading in a direction that's going to be good and the last two weeks has gone that way. Hopefully, we've starting figuring things out, but it's been difficult for - not just us - but a lot of teams. When they made that [rule change], that was a huge change when everybody had most of their testing already used up. It made it difficult for certain teams and us being one of them." (WHY WAS THIS YEAR'S RACE BETTER?) "I think with the tire and probably the bump stop rules and things of this nature made a difference. It seems like everybody is slipping and sliding a lot more than what they were last year. With slipping and sliding more you're going to be able to produce some passing and some lead changes. I guess we had like 18 lead changes today. That can be contributed to NASCAR doing the right things, I guess, trying to get things better and better, and Goodyear bringing a tire that's made it able for us to make some passes. But it seems like you get going one time and it's doing one thing and the next time it's doing another and it's sliding around. You kind of chase the car all day, which is going to produce a lot of passes. You're going to go forwards and backwards pretty much all day. You just hope at the end that you're moving on the forward part." (ON JEFF GORDON WINNING THREE TIMES IN EIGHT YEARS AT THE BRICKYARD) "You're asking the wrong guy. For us, it's terrible. But I think it's great to come here to Indy. There are so many fans here and it's great. Heck, I wish it was either one of us (Benson or Sterling Marlin) that won three of them. But in the same token, they've got a great race team, so they're winning races. That's what it's all about. But it's pretty cool to come here with all the great fans that they have here, and there is plenty of them when you come here." ### drew_brown@mindspring.com