Hornaday's error, Benson's malaise has CTS near even (cont'd)

Hornaday came to Phoenix trailing Benson by six points. PIR has been the penultimate event in all three of Hornaday's championship seasons and a place where, in more than 40 career starts he's won four times: two in the Truck Series and two in the former NASCAR AutoZone Elite Division, the Southwest Tour for Late Model cars.

But after starting from the pole, in an act of misplaced bravado, he overdrove Turn 3 on the first lap, pushed up and nudged leader Busch and then spun into the outside wall between Turns 3 and 4 and down the racetrack in front of the other 33 trucks in the field.

“

Man, [my truck] is tore up. I was going to take that thing to Homestead. I'm not taking it now.

”

RON HORNADAY

That opened this production of "theater of the bizarre."

"The driver was a complete idiot," Hornaday said after the race. "I thought I was going to get fired [because] that was the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life. Knowing Busch was on the outside and me driving in there as hard as he is, that was total stupidity on my part. Kyle's got nothing to lose out there but to win that race.

"I really thought I had a half-truck on him getting in and I knew I got in really good and he got in that much better. I needed just another couple of inches. I got loose and I just tagged the back of him and spun the rest of the way around. I had a truck that could win the race and I blew it.

"I hate to see that because when the guys in the front part of the race take half the other people out on the racetrack we don't need to do that. I lucked up there and Johnny wrecks and it's like, 'man, nobody wants to win this championship if we're giving it back and forth to each other.' It's unbelievable."

The seven-truck melee left Hornaday's No. 33 Kevin Harvick Inc. Chevrolet shredded on all four corners and Benson with body damage down the right side of his No. 23 Bill Davis Racing Toyota. Hornaday's truck staggered to the end of pit road and then turned behind the wall.

And then something miraculous to anyone but Truck Series regulars occurred.

Crewmen from no less than six teams -- including three with no ties whatsoever to KHI -- leaped in to help get the 33 back on track. They did massive bodywork and replaced the rear track bar, with former chassis builder Hornaday right in the midst of them, and returned to the race on leader Busch's 31st lap, 30 laps down.

Ford team owner Jack Roush actually came over his team's radio network and told his men to go and help Harvick's teams, a healthy dose of benevolence.

"I think that's the camaraderie you see here in the Truck Series," Roush Fenway Racing driver Erik Darnell said after finishing seventh. "That's what happens here. Ron is a pretty good friend. I know Matt Puccia [Darnell's crew chief] and Rick Ren [Hornaday's crew chief] are pretty good friends, so anything we can do to help them out, we're going to do. That's just the way the series is."

Hornaday and Ren knew they appreciated it, as the foes all worked around each other.

"The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series is just unbelievable," Hornaday said. "When you go out there and wreck a truck and just to see these guys [from other teams] want the 33 truck out there and make a points race out of this thing ... My hat's off to everybody and from the bottom of my heart I've got to thank them all because that was so awesome."

"I can't say enough for the effort of my guys and the effort of Jack Roush's teams and the effort of the TRG [Motorsports] bunch," Ren said. "All of those people came to our aid and we had Ford guys and Chevrolet guys putting our Chevrolet back together to get into this race and that just shows what this Truck Series is about -- there's not really any enemies over here [and] we're all willing to help each other.

"We just kept digging. I told Ron don't give up. It's a long night. You never know what's going to happen."

Hornaday was 29th and Benson 18th when the race restarted at Lap 69, after Craig Wood crashed his Ford in Turn 2. But only 10 laps later, Benson had moved to 14th while Hornaday was still in 29th and only looking to gain one spot when he passed Wood, whose part-time team had parked its truck.

Act II of this theatrical production was about to begin.

"After our first deal [on Lap 1] it bent the rear a little bit and we got it working and felt like we could probably run in the top six or 10," Benson said. "I was really trying to be patient. We ended up being in the right place at the wrong time or something, I don't know. We're just making it exciting. I don't know what else to say." (Continued)