Benson, A TV Show Not Starring Robert Guillaume
Remember the 1970s ABC series Soap? A satirical soap-opera, it spun off a
more successful series from one of its characters, played by Robert Guillaume.
The show, Benson, lasted quite a few years, and Star Trek fans seeing it today
will recognize one of the show’s central performers, Rene Auberjonois.
This is mentioned because a real-life Benson – Johnny, from Michigan – has
raced in Winston Cup about as long as his TV namesake was on the airwaves.
Johnny Benson has had quite a long ride to his first Winston Cup win. Beginning
in ASA ranks, he won top rookie honors in 1992, then won the series title in
1993. This helped get him a ride with Bill Baumgardner in Grand National racing,
where he repeated his path in ASA – top rookie, then champion.
The Grand National crown won him a ride with Chuck Rider’s #30 Pontiac in
Winston Cup. Given the enormous success top rookies acquire in their debut
seasons nowadays, and also given that Benson was the sole full-time rookie in
the 1996 season, Benson’s rookie stats look dismal, but realistically they were
commendable.
After finishing 23rd at Daytona (this after smacking the wall with 25 to go)
Benson timed third at Rockingham but got into a nine-car wreck in Four. He then
won the pole at Atlanta but crashed in practice, used his backup car from the
back, and dropped out. His first top ten came at Talladega in April, and his
first big wreck came at Charlotte in May – after slamming the wall in Two, he
slid down the banking into Ricky Craven’s path; the impact sliced the entire
rear half of Benson’s Pontiac apart and wiped out Craven’s Chevrolet; it was
later estimated that if Craven had hit Benson a foot further to the right, one
or both could not have survived.
Benson got going in July. This began his breakthrough period in Winston Cup –
he stormed into the lead at New Hampshire and finished ninth; he finished a
strong fifth at Pocono, then led the most laps at Indianapolis before finishing
eighth. A seventh at Michigan followed, then tenth at Richmond, before the
season petered out; he nonetheless finished a respectable 21st in points.
1997 proved even better. Benson finished ninth at Richmond, missed the
Atlanta 500 (that he’d won the pole in that same race the year before was a huge
irony), then finished tenth at Darlington. He finished ninth at Talladega and
tenth at Michigan and seventh at Indianapolis. His consistent top-20 finishes
were further helpful in points. He won the pole at Michigan, bagged three
additional top tens, and finished 11th in points.
He then decided to join Roush Racing as it expanded to five teams. He crashed
with Ken Schrader in the Daytona 125 – Schrader punched the first turn wall a la
Earnhardt three years later and Benson got clipped and turned to the wall
himself – and thus missed the 500. After burning a valve at Rockingham Benson
went on a top-ten tear – seven top tens and 14th in points with the first third
of the season complete. Then the collapse came – he managed three ninth-place
finishes the rest of the year and fell to 20th in points.
A lackluster 1999 caused his decision to go to Tim Beverly’s Pontiac team,
and it was an effort that twice in 2000 nearly got padlocked. The Beverly team
had no sponsor for the 2000 season. Benson led the final quarter of the Daytona
500 with a one-race Lycos sponsorship deal, but a late restart dropped him to
12th. That nonetheless was enough for Lycos to sign on as sponsor – which turned
into a "phantom" sponsorship as money did not come forth very well,
and by the Firecracker 400 (and another missed Atlanta 500 plus a stunning
second at Bristol) Lycos was gone and Beverly was looking for a buyer for the
team. He got one in Reed Morton and Nelson Bowers, owners of Ken Schrader’s #36
Pontiacs, and then came Valvoline, which bought into the team, the first such
sponsor-owner deal in modern NASCAR. But as Valvoline had a 2000 deal with Mark
Martin, a sponsor for Benson was still needed else the team could not run the
rest of the year. It came from Aaron’s and RCA, and Benson finished fifth at
Michigan, seventh at Richmond, 11th at New Hampshire despite a couple of pit
penalties, second at Dover, eighth at Charlotte, and 13th in final points.
2001 cemented Benson’s reputation as the Benny Parsons of 21st-century NASCAR
– a nice guy and consistent finisher. He was as high as third in points in the
first third of the year, and finished 11th.
"We’ve been close so many times," Benson said after finally
breaking through at Rockingham. Benson rode the cushion and stormed into the
lead late, running out of gas while doing burnouts after the race (isn’t a
simple, dignified victory lap sufficient anymore?). It’s also been a comeback,
as he missed a number of mid-season races after breaking ribs at Richmond.
The points race changed somewhat. Tony Stewart got lapped but finished 14th,
while Jimmie Johnson all-but-officially folded in the point race – a loose wheel
wrecked the stubs and the hub had to be changed. Mark Martin finished second,
but the points he gained may be nullified after an unapproved spring was found
in post race [Editor’s Note: Martin was penalized 25 points for the infraction].
Thus do Martin and Johnson desperately need to win and Stewart to crash or blow
up at Phoenix; nothing else will get them any shot at the championship. For
Johnson, the hopes for rookie of the year may also be slipping, with Ryan Newman
only six behind in the title chase.
The race was good for several teams needing a good run, none more so than
Mike Skinner, who bagged his first top ten all year and first since the spring
of 2001; also getting a good effort was Jeff Burton, twelfth in points now with
his fourth top five of the year.
It was less kind to Rusty Wallace, who got lapped again and tangled with Jeff
Gordon several times during the race – this is one of those feuds, like the
Iran-Iraq war, where the two sides deserve each other and neither deserve any
sympathy.
The Benson win brings to eighteen the number of winners this year. This is an
astonishing number even with last year’s nineteen winners. Another astonishing
stat – the highest number of top tens this year is Ryan Newman’s 21, followed by
Tony Stewart’s twenty tied with Mark Martin and Jimmie Johnson, all this after
34 races.
This stands in contrast with past years, when twenty top tens in 31 races
were only enough for a top ten in points. Thus is the reality of parity in
modern NASCAR underscored.
Just how irrelevant has CART become in racing?
The California 500 was run on the same day as the American 400 at Rockingham,
and despite a better-than-expected crowd, there will be virtually no widespread
notice that the event was run.
Which is too bad, because the California 500, the fastest 500-miler in
motorsports history, was a good race, despite CART’s typically poor car count
and the surprising weakness of the draft with the Hanford wing; the lead still
changed hands 44 times despite the greater-than-expected spread of the field –
of the four cars that finished on the lead lap, the spread in just two laps was
over two seconds.
Michael Andretti has been the Harry-Gant-at-Rockingham of CART’s Hanford-wing
races – he has run to win and has come up short each time. The 2000 Michigan 500
was one of the greatest races ever run anywhere, and Michael finished a
frustratingly close second in the event’s sensational finish. He came up second
again at Fontana, losing on a very-late restart after Dario Franchitti’s blown
engine and fire – Dario may have needed a hug afterward; we assume Ashley Judd
gave him one.
The winner was Jimmy Vasser, largely MIA in CART racing the last two seasons.
Driving Bobby Rahal’s car, Vasser led 148 laps, usually by well over a second.
CART’s new mandatory fuel-stop rule – identical to the Daytona Shootout’s Lap
10-11 stop rule of 1998-2000 – made for some interesting pit strategy, though
the first stop led to the first yellow when Bruno Junqueira lost a wheel coming
out of the pits.
With one race left, CART’s point race is solely for second with Christiano Da
Matta’s long-locked title in hand. With the Mexico City round next up, thus will
end another season for a series increasingly troubled, with factory withdrawals,
loss of the title sponsor, the poor counts of cars, and rumors of an F1-merger
of some sort still in the air.
Finally, just why did NASCAR limit the annual Pit Crew Competition to only
teams in the top 25 in points? Because teams not in the top 25 often performed
better than top-25 teams in the competition?
If so, it indicates faulty thinking. The pit crew competition isn’t supposed
to be limited to just those teams high in points – given that low-ranked teams
often outperformed the hotdogs in the competition, it said a lot about the whole
dichotomy between the "good" teams and the others.
The Pit Crew Competition needs to be opened back up to the full field.