NASCAR- Benson Finishes Sixth at Las Vegas
5 March 2000
Lycos Team Moves To 11th in Standings (Sunday March 5, 2000 Las Vegas) #10 Lycos Pontiac owner Tim Beverley had mixed feelings as he stood inside the Tyler Jet Motorsports transporter Sunday afternoon giving an interview and watching the rain fall at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Beverley told a reporter he didn t know if he wanted the rain to stop or continue. Minutes later the clouds opened up even more and stopped the Carsdirect.com 400 after 148 of 267 laps. But it didn t dampen any enthusiasm. "Sure I d like to see what would have happened this afternoon, but right now the feeling in this truck is off the chart," Beverley said. "The feeling is hard to describe. There is a great sense of accomplishment and an even greater sense of might be coming in the next few weeks." Beverley s analysis followed a stirring performance by his second-year team and driver Johnny Benson who drove from the middle of the pack to a sixth place finish forcing the NASCAR community to take notice once again 2000. Benson appeared ready to claim even more positions when the caution flag flew for the rain. "Man we had a good car today," Benson said as he stood in the rain waiting for NASCAR to cancel the race. "I don t know how many more positions we could have picked up, but we have to be pleased we can walk out of here with a sixth place finish and now we just have to keep it going at Atlanta." Benson began Sunday s race in eighth and fell back immediately but as the laps accumulated the five-year veteran began slowly climbing through the field sometimes using the apron of the frontstretch to pass. "We had the car working pretty well," Benson said. "(Crew Chief) James Ince has done an awesome job with these cars this year. We arrived here and didn t unload as good as we wanted. We made a few minor changes and qualified eighth and then Saturday we thought we would be pretty good but today was as good as we thought it would be." . Sunday s sixth place finish follows a 12th place finish at Daytona and 14th place finish at Rockingham. It moves Benson and the Lycos team into 11th place in the 2000 standings making the team perhaps the biggest surprise of the 2000 season Ince is pleased with the results especially since the team has to be conservative because provisional starting positions are distributed based on last year s standings. Darlington will mark the first time the 2000 standings will be used to determine provisionals. "We ve got a really good race team and Johnny Benson is driving the wheels off. We ve got to be very happy with that right now," Ince said. "I guess the good part for us is that we are still being conservative with what we are doing. We ve got to get through Atlanta to get us in a position to where we can go back and race, and be comfortable with where we are in the points. We re points racing right now like we would at the end of the year, but this is an awful strong race team." Beverley had an inkling this could happen in 2000. "We were underrated by everybody except ourselves," said the Texan who also runs one of the largest airplane businesses in America "I talked with Johnny before the season and I could see his determination and I think he saw how determined we were to win and how good our team could be." Jeff Burton won Sunday s race and was followed across the finish line by Tony Stewart, Mark Martin, Bill Elliott, Bobby Labonte and Benson. More Benson Quotes Courtesy of Pontiac "That was really good. We kept coming and coming. I would have liked to have seen 10 more laps to try to get an orange (No Bull 5) spoiler on this Pontiac, but it didn t happen. We ll take a sixth and walk out of here with the points. We re real happy with the way the car ran this weekend. James Ince and all the guys at Tyler Jet Motorsports have just done a great job. We ve just been working and working and working. We re just doing the best that we can. James put a good set-up under this car. I always felt that I could get around here pretty good, with a fourth place finish here before. I ve had some pretty good racecars and had some pretty good runs here. All-in-all Tyler Jet Motorsports has just put a great racecar together. "(On His Season So Far) "We can t complain. We wanted to go down to Daytona, just gather some points, get rid of it and get out of there, and had an opportunity to almost win the thing. As the week went at Rockingham we thought we were going to be a little better than what we were, but still we walked out of there 14th. Today we really felt we had a top 10-race car. I would have like to have seen it go a little longer, but we ll take sixth, get out of here and go on to Atlanta."