After a rough year, Benson ready to win

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- After a brief rain delay at Bristol Motor Speedway on Friday, drivers received the call to take to the track for Bud Pole Qualifying.

As Johnny Benson was getting ready to exit the No. 10 Pontiac transporter, his crew chief, James Ince, gave him an inspirational bit of advice.

	Johnny Benson Credit: Autostock

"Don't screw up," Ince said. To that, Benson shot back, "Don't worry, I will."

Well, he didn't.

By qualifying sixth for Saturday night's Sharpie 500, he tied his season's best mark for the third time and set a personal best at this .533-mile, high-banked concrete oval.

"That was a good lap for us and I'm not going to complain about that at all," Benson said. "It's a lot of fun to race here, I just don't like to practice and qualify. But it's a great place to race.

"Hopefully, what they say about starting up front means that you finish up front. We just need to keep ourselves out of trouble on Saturday night."

Staying out of trouble has been something Benson hasn't been able to do this year -- not the kind of trouble that has gotten him called into the NASCAR hauler, but the kind that has landed him in the hospital twice.

After suffering two wrecks in which he injured several ribs, he was forced to sit out six races. While the points chart shows him 35th with only three top-10 finishes, that is not a true indication of what the No. 10 team is all about this year.

SHARPIE 500 • Lineup • 1st Practice Speeds

"We've had some good runs this year and we've had some bad ones, too," Benson said. "Incidents have happened and I've had to sit out some races. We've had everything, I think, that can possibly happen and we feel we are out of bad luck. Hopefully, everything will be good from here on out.

"It's been a terrible year, but in a lot of ways it hasn't. We've been running well when things have happened. We've been better than what some of the finishes have shown"

If the third time is really a charm, then Benson might be in Victory Lane here on Saturday. With 216 starts, Benson has yet to win a Winston Cup Series race.

He finished second at Bristol in March of 2000.

"Man, I was hoping last week was going to be the week," Benson said, regarding his eighth-place finish at Michigan. "But now I'm hoping this week. I don't care where the win happens, but Bristol would definitely be fun.

"All those people in these grandstands yelling, screaming and having fun -- that would be cool."