“You know, like I say, it takes a whole year, and it's just a way ... cool deal here. I don't think people understand how much this means to me to win this, but not just for me, for Bill and Gail (Davis), everybody at Bill Davis Racing ... I'll remember this for many, many years to come.”
Benson's assessment is apt. Throughout much of the season, he and Hornaday traded the championship lead, much as Hornaday had done with Mike Skinner the previous year, when Hornaday won his third title in the series.
After Hornaday won at Texas in June, the field was still tightly bunched, with Hornaday leading Matt Crafton by 45 points, Benson by 55, Todd Bodine by 65 and Rick Crawford and Jack Sprague by 71. The lead changed hands the following week at Michigan, where Benson seized the points lead with a second-place finish to Hornaday's 23rd.
Benson's third-place finish at Texas began a ten-race stretch during which he won four times - including consecutive victories at Kentucky, O'Reilly Raceway Park and Nashville - finished second twice, third twice and fourth once to pull away from everyone except Hornaday. The only hiccup in those ten races came at Memphis, where Benson blew an engine, finished 33rd and temporarily lost the points lead.
From that point on, the contest was too close to call. After Hornaday finished fifth at Las Vegas and Benson crashed out in 27th position, Benson's lead was a single point. Hornaday was up 39 points after running second at Talladega, but Benson scored a 104-point turnaround at Martinsville, winning the race after Hornaday ran out of fuel with three laps remaining and finished 29th.
After a runner-up finish at Atlanta, Hornaday picked up his sixth win of the season the next week at Texas, race #23 of 25, to narrow the lead to six points heading to Phoenix.
Notable not just for Benson's first championship, the series saw three straight first-time winners, starting with Matt Crafton, who picked up his first victory in the series after more than seven years of trying. Donny Lia followed with a win at Mansfield, and Scott Speed - blue toenails and all - took the chequered flag the following week at Dover.
Another first-time winner was Ryan Newman, Hornaday's teammate-for-a-day for Kevin Harvick Inc. at Atlanta. Newman won the race in his only start in the series. In retrospect, if Newman and runner-up Hornaday had switched finishing positions in that event, Hornaday would have been series champion.
Other season highlights included three wins from Kyle Busch; the debut of Randy Moss Motorsports, as the all-pro NFL wide receiver put the #81 truck on the track; and Colin Braun, 20, posting three top fives and eight top tens in winning the Raybestos Rookie of the Year title.
by Reid Spencer/Sporting News
