Benson finishes one position ahead of Ron Hornaday to claim championship on final lap

By Jeff Gluck - Associate Editor

Thursday, November 20, 2008

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It was such a cliché, really. For weeks – months, even – Ron Hornaday and Johnny Benson kept insisting their battle for the Craftsman Truck Series championship would come down to the final lap at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Wait ’til the last lap at Homestead, they said. Nothing will be decided until the checkered flag waves at Homestead, they proclaimed.

At the time, it seemed like a bit of hyperbole. Sure, the championship could come down to the final race. But the final lap? That never happens.

And yet, it did.

Benson won the 2008 Craftsman Truck Series title by finishing seventh at Homestead – just one position ahead of Hornaday, who would have won the championship if he had gotten around Benson on the last lap.

But Benson held off his hard-charging competition and won his first Truck title by a mere seven points in a spine-tingling, pulsating finish to the season as Todd Bodine won the Ford 200 to conclude Craftsman’s sponsorship of the series.

The result left Benson crying on the backstretch, crew chief Trip Bruce with tears on pit road and team owner Bill Davis seemingly stunned at his organization’s first title.

“I knew we would win a championship,” Benson said in between swigs of champagne from an oversized bottle. “I hated that it took this long, but I knew we were going to win a championship. It was just a matter of time.”

At 45 years old, with a gentle Michigan accent and the constant presence of eyeglasses, Benson looks as harmless as a dad picking up his kids from soccer practice. It’s far from the rugged appearance of Hornaday, who looks tough enough to scare off alligators in a Florida swamp.

Yet the two men share a feisty competitive spirit and a burning desire to win. And that was no more evident than when both were driving with their hearts on their hoods in the dramatic final five laps.

Hornaday had entered the finale just three points behind Benson, which made the championship-clinching scenario fairly simple: Beat him.

He and his Kevin Harvick Inc. team had been doing just that with nine laps remaining, when a caution came out with Hornaday in third and Benson in sixth.

Benson had taken just two tires on an earlier pit stop to gain track position but had begun to slip back through the field. Bruce, the crew chief, reminded Benson to keep an eye on whether or not Hornaday came down pit road.

If Hornaday stayed on the track, Benson would come in.

Atop Hornaday’s pit box, veteran crew chief Rick Ren had a problem: He couldn’t hear his driver. The team’s radio suddenly was malfunctioning at the most crucial moment of the season, and while Hornaday could hear the team, he couldn’t talk back.

“What are we doing?” one crew member yelled to Ren.

“I don’t know if he’s happy [with the truck] or not,” Ren replied over the radio. “If we come in, let’s take four tires.”

Having been denied several wins earlier in the season by trucks that got fresh tires late in the race, Ren decided to bring Hornaday into the pits. It would be a call that would determine the championship, one way or the other.

“Ron, if you can hear me, you’re in 13th. Benson’s in sixth. There are five laps to go,” Ren said.

Five laps to gain seven positions. Green flag.

Hornaday began to pick his way through the field on fresh rubber, while Benson could only maintain his position on old tires. With three to go, Hornaday was up to ninth place, but Benson’s first-time BDR teammate Tayler Malsam wrecked to bring out a caution. That cost Hornaday valuable momentum and the extra lap he needed to pass Benson.

On the ensuing restart, there were just two trucks in between Benson and Hornaday. But one of them was BDR’s Scott Speed, who lagged on the restart and cost Hornaday valuable time in chasing down Benson.

The final lap of the season – the one both drivers had referred to so often – saw Benson drop one spot and Hornaday gain one. They finished consecutively, a fitting end to the second-closest points race in series history.

“One more lap,” Ren said, standing in the back of the garage after the race. “One more lap, we would have won it.”

Benson and his team weren’t about to disagree. In fact, Benson mistakenly thought he’d lost the championship when Travis Kvapil passed him on the final turn. But despite leading seven laps to Hornaday’s 37, Benson’s truck was the one that finished ahead.

“Trip had said [before the race], ‘We might not be the fastest, but hopefully the smartest one wins this,’” Benson said. “And his calls were extremely smart.”

Race winner Bodine, who said he won the race with a “terrible” truck, added he was “really shocked” to see Hornaday lose the championship.

“Ron’s been the guy to beat every week,” Bodine said. “I won’t comment on how it went, but it’s a shame that it went the way it did – the fastest truck didn’t win.”

Others openly questioned Ren’s call, including Hornaday’s team owner Kevin Harvick and Bruce, who sympathized with Ren’s dilemma.

“I think they would have beat us if we would have stayed out,” Bruce said. “We all watched the race. They had a better truck than us tonight.”

Hornaday defended the call.

“If we would have come back and won the race, it would have been the call of the century,” Hornaday said. “We lost it. That’s all there is to it.”

Said Ren: “I probably should have only put on [two tires]. It’s alright. I’m not going to second-guess what I did.”

Though this year’s points race was as tight throughout the season as in 2007, it was decidedly different. Hornaday won the 2007 championship with an average finish of 5.7. This year, his average finish was 10.0.

“To have that many bad finishes and still be racing for the championship? We were just fortunate to even still be in the hunt,” Ren said.

With that, he smiled and walked off into the darkness of the garage, hand-in-hand with his wife, Joann. When a championship comes down to the last lap, not everyone can go home with a bottle of champagne.