GM RACING NOTES AND QUOTES--MICHIGAN

MICHIGAN; JUNE 11, 2003; PAGE 1

JOHNNY BENSON, NO. 10 PONTIAC GRAND PRIX: NOTE: Michigan native 
Johnny Benson returns to his home track this weekend for the Sirius Satellite 
Radio 400 at Michigan International Speedway. Benson, a native of Grand Rapids 
and a second-generation racer, also owns Berlin Raceway in Marne, one of the 
country’s premier short-track venues.

On the track, Benson earned his first top-five of the season June 2 at Dover 
International Speedway, and looks forward to the first of two trips to the 2-
mile oval in the Irish Hills of Michigan.

WHAT’S THE SECRET TO GETTING AROUND MICHIGAN COMPETITIVELY? “It’s the same as 
it is every week. You have to have good horsepower, a good body on there. The 
race is always fun there because there are two or three grooves. You can start 
running three-wide in the corners and I think that’s pretty neat. Some guys 
choose to run the bottom, some guys choose to run the middle and others choose 
to run the top. As the race goes, you have to identify where your car works 
best and then work on it there. There are areas to pick. At Pocono and a lot of 
other race tracks, it’s just one groove—the bottom. Michigan is that way to 
start with, because the bottom is quickest to start with, but it’s not long 
before it starts to raise up the track.” 

DO YOU THINK THE NEW ’03 PONTIAC WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE AT MICHIGAN? “I don’t 
know. I think the cars are all getting pretty equal, or at least there’s nobody 
complaining. They’re all pretty close. With Pontiac, because we only have five 
cars, it’s kind of hard to get on top of the program. We hope it’s going to be 
better. We haven’t run there yet with it, but we are looking forward to it.”

BEING A MICHIGAN NATIVE, IS IT NICE TO GO HOME TO RACE? “To me, all the tracks 
are the same, but it is neat to go home. When I do go home, I race at my local 
track and do appearances and things like that. That’s the good part of being 
home. I like racing at MIS. We’ve always been decent there, I like the track 
and that’s because it gives you options. If you come up on someone, you always 
have someplace to go to get around them.”

YOU’RE COMING OFF A TOP-FIVE RUN AT DOVER. DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’VE GOT 
MOMENTUM, AND HOW IMPORTANT IS THAT TO YOUR TEAM? “Having a good finish, 
obviously, the team likes that. That’s what you strive for and it pumps them up 
a little bit. They haven’t had a good year, it’s been up and down, but we’ve 
had some good runs. We’ve had some mechanical failures and we’ve had some 
incidents. Obviously, I think we’re a lot better team than we’ve shown in the 
points. Dover was a great race for us and we know we are capable of doing that. 
The hard part is trying to make it week in and week out. We’ll make that 
happen. Obviously, momentum is something a lot of people try to bank on, but by 
the same token, it’s about a lot of hard work and the guys have been doing 
that. It’s a matter of being able to put those together and have good runs. I’m 
really looking forward to the race at MIS and the whole rest of the year.”

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