Conversation: Johnny Benson

Do you feel like you and your MBV Motorsports team has come to grips the quickest with the 2003 Pontiac Grand Prix?

I'd like to say we've got a little bit of knowledge of what's going on, but I'm not sure we've been the quickest to come to grips with it.

Audio Listen to the Conversation! 921,609 Bytes / 7:18 Listen

We're working hard at it and we're sitting OK in the points, but we haven't run the way we want to run and the way we feel we can run.

We've had some good finishes, but not on the lead lap and that's the area we're trying to get a little bit better on and working hard on.

Like I said, we're not disappointed that we're finishing 11th, 12th and 13th -- we're just disappointed we're not on the lead lap.

I guess there's not a lot you and crew chief James Ince can talk about in terms of ratcheting up your consistency, but is there anything you've got up your sleeve to help you get there?

Johnny Benson  Driver Page  Bio  2003 Stats  Merchandise

I doubt if anybody in this business will leave anything up their sleeve, that's for sure. It's so competitive you have to do everything you can and be as quick as you can all the time.

Although James says that we're being just a touch conservative on some of our racing stuff here in the first couple of races, to make sure that we're good in the points -- to make sure that we can have a little hiccup here and there -- it's still pretty hard to be conservative in this sport.

Nothing is guaranteed in this sport, but do you feel like with the way you guys have run so far and with the room for improvement you've spoken of, can this season fulfill the promise your team has shown, which was kind of derailed last season when you were injured?

We sure hope that we can make that happen. But we set there last year pretty confident we could run in the top-10 and we struggled with that. But with what happened, with the two injuries it was a tough year for us.

	Benson has completed all but five laps in 2003. Credit: Autostock

We're going to keep moving forward and working hard with what we've got and our goals, just like everybody else's, are to be in the top-10 in the points and to win a couple of races.

We're just trying to do the best that we can with everything that we have and see where it all falls at the end of the year.

Heck, it's too early to say where you're going to end up. We've still got 30 races -- 35 races to go. It's a lot of racing to go, yet.

There's a lot of things that could happen and a lot of things that could go for you or against you.

You're involved with Berlin Raceway up near home in Marne, Mich. What is your plan for up there and how much will you get to race the Late Model car up there?

They're going to start at the end of April and I'm going to go up there May 10, June 10 and June 28. Those are the three races I'm running.

We've got Tony Stewart coming up, I believe for the June 28 one. I'm not sure what we've got going for some of the other races.

	Credit: Autostock

We've talked to a couple people but they haven't committed 100 percent. Either way, that's always fun to go home and go up there and race against those guys.

It's an awful competitive race track and it's a lot of fun to do that.

I'm not sure if (Ken) Schrader is going to go up again or not. I'm sure he would if I asked him. We just want to make sure we get some different people up there.

Kenny was up there last year and actually ran pretty good. He finished third in the race that we won. Tony came up and drove a car of Randy Sweet's and won the race.

We put 'em in good stuff -- stuff that's going to win the race, not run in mid-pack. That's fun because the fans want to see them come up there and do good.

What kind of perspective has doing the TV show, "Inside Winston Cup," given you? How much do you prepare for it and how much is off-the-cuff?

Don't you watch the show? You can tell we don't prepare for it. That's pretty obvious and I think that's why people like it, because we sit up there and go, 'I don't know why people watch this show.'

	With crew chief James Ince (right) Credit: Autostock

We wonder if they don't have nothing better to do on Monday than watch that show.

By the same token, it's a great show. Speed Cannel does a tremendous job with it and it's always great to work with everybody at Fox.

It's just a neat deal to do, for us. We've been doing it six years, now. We took one year off -- they took us off the air one year, actually -- but they put us back on the following year because they saw that people really did like it.

We thought once we were off we were done, that this would never open doors to get in again. We never thought we'd get to do it again but everyone agreed to come back as long as they'd do it in the same fashion that we'd been allowed to do it in the past.

I believe that's part of the key to the success of the show.

Does doing the show give you any appreciation for the amount of preparation the guys that broadcast your races have to do, week in and week out?

They've got to be a lot more prepared than we do, that's for sure. If we mess up, people just laugh at it; but if those guys mess up on Sundays the people don't laugh quite so much.

I think their job is 10 or a hundred times more difficult than what we do on our TV show. We just fun with it and give the people the information they want to hear -- or at least the information that we believe is the way it is, and we go from there.

If we get thrown off the show we get thrown off -- that's just the way it is.

With the intensity of the current Winston Cup schedule, what do you and (wife) Debbie and the kids do to have fun, to relax?

Johnny Benson: It's pretty tough because you don't seem to get a lot of time to do different things just for travel reasons. But when we are home, we live on the lake so we go out on the boat or the wave runners or stuff like that.

	Celebrating victory at Rockingham in 2002 Credit: Autostock

That's pretty much about it. Other than that, you really only have Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Of course, we do the TV show on Monday and you have shop meetings and stuff like that on either Monday or Tuesday. By the same token when we're there we're able to do that during the summer.

During the winter, it's a little tougher to decide what you want to do. Of course, I work on my Late Model over at my shop, so I stay real busy.

Do you think the fans realize and appreciate what the crew guys and drivers and families put into this, and put up with to put on races each weekend?

I think the fans, when they come to the race track want to see a great race. That's pretty much the in-depth knowledge that the average fan has.

There's some other fans that are a little more in-depth and understand the hard work that goes into it. But the average fan that comes to the track just wants to come and have a good time and see a good race. That's about the extent of it.

I've worked with people that come over and help me on the car and thought beforehand that it was great, just to come to the (short) track and hang out.

They watch the race and say, 'If you ever need a hand, let me know.' They come over and work and that lasts about a month -- they say, 'this is way too hard. It's too much work for me.'

It definitely is a sport that you work extremely hard on all levels, not just Winston Cup, and there's a lot of time involved in preparing cars and getting them ready for a race.

Conversations appear on NASCAR.com every Tuesday.