Year In Review: MB2/MBV Motorsports

For MB2 and MBV Motorsports, upheaval and uproar largely defined the 2003 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season.

Some of the instances were uncontrollable: Jerry Nadeau suffered serious injuries in a crash at Richmond in the spring and General Motors announced the departure of the teams' Pontiac brand at the end of the season.

	Johnny Benson will be replaced by Scott Riggs in the No. 10 next year. Credit: Autostock

But the organization brought some of the unrest on itself, with its termination of the final year of No. 10 Pontiac driver Johnny Benson's contract.

Benson and crew chief James Ince never recaptured the momentum they had held at the end of 2002, when Benson gave himself and the organization their first Winston Cup win, at Rockingham.

Benson went 13 races in 2003 before he scored his first top-10 finish, and then went 10 more before he got the second. Qualifying was an issue all season, with only three top-10 starts.

The October departure of Ince, who had been with Benson for four seasons, added more turmoil to the already struggling team. Interim crew chief Jay Guy was brought in to help, but by that time Benson had already been notified that he wouldn't be driving the No. 10 car in 2004.

MB2/MBV MOTORSPORTS 05|02|03 - Nadeau injured in a practice accident at RIR Play video  •  MB2 team page  •  MBV team page  •  Benson, Pontiac go out with top-five finish

A season's best fourth place at Homestead was a tough pill to swallow, as Benson had no idea what his future plans were, other than racing his own Late Model car.

Nadeau ran only the first 10 races of the season before he was critically injured at Richmond when his car hit the wall flush on the driver's side.

Before the accident, Nadeau had qualified better than he finished while working with crew chief Ryan Pemberton. But even at that, the team only had one decent race -- at Texas where Nadeau qualified fifth and finished fourth.

Nadeau failed to lead a lap in his shortened season and currently faces an extensive rehabilitation effort. MB2 has made a commitment to Nadeau, in conjunction with Hendrick Motorsports, to field cars in a variety of divisions while the driver recovers.

	Boris Said earned a spot in the Bud Shootout at Infineon Raceway. Credit: Autostock

The balance of the season for the No. 01 saw five different drivers in the seat. Boris Said and Mike Skinner both won Bud Poles in the No. 01 car, but creditable race results were harder to come by. The team scored only six top-20 finishes in the balance of the 26 races.

With Jason Keller, Mike Wallace, Said, Skinner and Joe Nemechek finishing the season, the best result was Said's sixth at Infineon Raceway. Nemechek gained the only oval track top-10, in his opening race at Atlanta.

Nemechek did show that some positives were in the future by qualifying the car in the top 10 in all four races he ran at the end of the season.

A finish of 24th in the Winston Cup owner points for the No. 10 Pontiac and 33rd for the No. 01 was hardly what the organization expected at the beginning of the season.

The final blow in the tumultuous season was the news, at the end of October, that General Motors' Pontiac brand would not return to the Nextel Cup Series in 2004. MB2 was Pontiac's senior team, having been with the brand since 1997. The team will switch to Chevrolets for 2004.