Johnny Benson, Trip Bruce question decision to disband No. 1 Red Horse Racing team
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series driver Johnny Benson is searching for a ride after his Red Horse Racing team suspended operations. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series driver Johnny Benson and crew chief Trip Bruce weren’t happy to learn they were being released by Red Horse Racing as part of team majority owner Tom DeLoach’s decision to shut down the organization’s No. 1 Truck team. Nor was the pair totally surprised when DeLoach announced on Monday morning that the team was suspending operations because of a lack of sponsorship on Benson’s truck.
What Benson and Bruce don’t quite understand, however, is why DeLoach disbanded their group and chose to keep the organization’s other team, the No. 11 group of driver T.J. Bell, intact.
In addition to being higher in points, Benson is also the defending series champion, having won the 2008 title at Bill Davis Racing, where he spent two years with Bruce atop his pit box. The two moved to Red Horse together in the offseason after Triad Racing Technologies bought BDR and decided not to field a Truck team.
“The 11 is running without a sponsor and so are we, so, yeah, a bit of a shock, but that’s OK,” Benson said in a phone interview with SceneDaily.com Monday. “It’s his (DeLoach’s) race team. He’s going to do what he wants.”
DeLoach, a retired Mobil Oil executive who founded Red Horse Racing in 2005 along with co-owner Jeff Hammond, brought Benson and Bruce over to Red Horse as a package deal for the organization’s new No. 1 team in 2009. After initial talks of running only a partial schedule, the team had planned to run the full season and compete for the series championship.
“Tom had talked a good deal about trying to bring us over there,” said Benson, a winner of 14 races in NASCAR’s No. 3 series. “He’s the one that came over and courted us to come over there to try to help out and make a championship-contender race team. It was plans in the making; he just changed his mind on moving forward, and I’m sure sponsorship had a lot to do with it.
“I find it hard to believe there’s a lot of teams out there getting sponsorship and things of this nature and us not being able to get one, being the defending champions, so that lies back in his hands.”
A car chief, shock specialist and two body hangers were also let go when the team suspended operations, Bruce said.
“We were told it was a lack of sponsorship. He was just going to shut it down and fire me and Johnny and the core of our group, so he did, and that’s about all I know,” Bruce said of DeLoach. “I just walked out. … I work in a forward pace, and that’s tough for some people. Everybody wants to win, but some people don’t really want to win that bad, you know, and it’s tough. I don’t know. It may have been overwhelming for him - what it actually takes to win.”
Benson and Bruce had been pretty pleased with how their season had been going over the first eight races.
Despite being seventh in points, Benson was just 155 points out of the lead. And the Grand Rapids, Mich., native was coming off a fourth-place finish last weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.
Bell has one top-10 to Benson’s four and is 20th in the standings.
“I don’t know if anybody realizes it at Red Horse or not, but I don’t pay attention to those points, but there was an opportunity to put a back-to-back drivers championship together - at the least,” Bruce said Monday. “… That opportunity was there for that, and it’s not anymore as of a few hours ago, so I don’t understand that part. That’s a little confusing. You take the worst of two performing teams, and you get rid of the good one.”
Benson, who says he had a three-year contract with Red Horse, says he hopes to land another ride - possibly even with Bruce as his crew chief again. Where Benson might drive next, though, he doesn’t know.
He doesn’t expect to compete in Saturday’s Truck race at Michigan.
“Seeing I just found out about this, I haven’t a clue yet,” he said. “I don’t have my own truck, so I would dare have to say probably not unless somebody else is fired.”
