AVONDALE, Ariz. -- In his 30th NASCAR national series start at Phoenix International Raceway, Ron Hornaday on Friday night made a critical mistake on the first lap of the Lucas Oil 150 that looked like it would cost him a shot at his record fourth Craftsman Truck Series title.

But when points leader Johnny Benson was involved in a tornado of wrecks and cautions, in an event that mixed equal parts bizarre, benevolence and bravado, it ensured that the Truck Series' championship battle would be the tightest ever going to next weekend's finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Race Video

• Tough day for leaders
• Bad start for Hornaday
• Benson wrecks, too
• Watch all the highlights

While Hornaday's team owner, Kevin Harvick, and Kyle Busch and Todd Bodine had a classic race for the win, Hornaday finishing 25th and Benson 26th was the most unlikely outcome imaginable, and it created a three-point edge for Benson over defending series champion Hornaday.

It certainly got people's attention, and if there was an imaginary 1-10 scale for weirdness, Friday night's 150-lapper on the Phoenix mile might take the cake.

"It definitely ranks up there pretty high -- probably an eight," third-place finisher and former series champion Bodine said. "You wouldn't figure one of the points guys [Hornaday] to be sitting on the pole and spin out on the first lap.

"Then it goes up to probably an 11 or 12 because you wouldn't figure the other guy would get in a wreck and they come out of here three points apart. That usually doesn't happen [in one race]. Three points separating them is going to be one hell of a race [at Homestead] to watch."

The fact that Harvick won the race, his third Truck score at Phoenix, was the proverbial icing on this racing confection.

"I saw [Benson's points lead] was like 40 points up on the [Sprint Vision video] monitor," Harvick said. "The cautions were a killer [because] I had time to watch the monitors and think about what was going on. This deal is just never over until it's over. It's racing and just glad that Ron drives as hard as he does.

"I know he'll be flustered that it turned out that way but that's what makes Ron Hornaday fun to watch."

So heading to Homestead, Hornaday, at least, has a great perspective on comebacks. Only three times in the Truck Series' first 13 years has the points leader been overtaken in the finale and Hornaday did it last year at Homestead when he erased Mike Skinner's 29-point advantage.

Harvick, whose trucks have won the past three series races with Ryan Newman at Atlanta, Hornaday at Texas and now himself at Phoenix, had already planned to enter trucks for he, Newman and Hornaday at Homestead.

"I feel good about their chances," Harvick said of Hornaday's team. "I'm just glad they both pulled a bonehead on the same night -- that's pretty much what it boils down to. They both could have had opportunities to put daggers in each other -- so luckily [Friday] they synchronized their bad nights.

"I told them there's got to be a lot easier way to shave three points off the lead than that, because from the driver's seat watching your truck wreck that's racing for a championship on Lap 1 and the other truck still running around the racetrack is not good. Luckily, it worked out the way that it did."

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."

At one point in the race Benson had an unofficial lead of more than 60 points over Hornaday. But on Lap 79 rookie Colin Braun crashed on the frontstretch when he got loose under Benson coming off Turn 4.

Before 20 more laps were logged, Benson's night, which he called "horrible for both of us," was complete. The race's fifth caution flew at Lap 88 when Benson and T.J. Bell made contact going into Turn 1.

“

It's just weird and amazing how this points deal has been going on. It definitely makes for a long day, I can tell you that.

”

JOHNNY BENSON

"I felt like I was underneath him and felt like he came down," Benson said before seeing a replay. "All of a sudden we bumped and both spun and wrecked and it pretty much ended our day. It took the right-front and pretty much destroyed everything up in the right-front."

Benson's crew did even more work than Hornaday's conglomerate, as they had to replace a lot of brake and suspension pieces, as well as a track bar.

Despite that Benson, who's already said he's leaving Davis' team at the end of the year and who's been in the top three in the Truck standings the past three seasons since finishing 10th in his debut year with BDR in 2005, was almost beside himself after the race.

"It's just weird and amazing how this points deal has been going on. It definitely makes for a long day, I can tell you that," Benson said.

The accident with Bell doomed Benson, who was ahead of Hornaday on the racetrack when he returned from behind the wall, but within a couple laps cut down a right-front tire and smacked the wall, bringing out the sixth of seven cautions at Lap 130.

After having two more tire problems, Benson parked his truck for only his third DNF in 24 races this season.

"At the end we kept blowing tires -- something was rubbing on there and we couldn't figure out what it was -- so we just started disconnecting a lot of stuff and I spun out and I thought I just better get off the racetrack," Benson said. "It was miserable -- a bad day."

Benson said the one good thing he carried away from Phoenix was a lack of pressure.

"We decided at the beginning of the year, running for the championship we weren't going to worry about anything and we weren't going to put any pressure on -- we're just going to go have some fun and go do it," Benson said. "So we're making it fun for the fans -- I can guarantee you that."

In the last gasp of weirdness, Hornaday seems to be enjoying it, too.

"Johnny and I said we're going to go fishing and whoever catches a fish first is going to win the championship -- because we definitely don't want to win this thing on the racetrack because we are both wrecking," Hornaday said. "All you got to do is laugh, because here is Johnny wrecked and I'm wrecked.

"When you think you have an opportunity to maybe make some gains," Benson said before hesitating, "it felt like every truck I got near, not running into you but [they'd] start making a lot of contact with a lot of different people. I was trying to be as patient as I could around there, but you can't drive other trucks. It ended up being what it's going to be.

"We're doing everything we can to hold them off," Benson said. "It felt like [coming into Phoenix] these next two races we have to get through them with no problems and unfortunately we both had problems [Friday]. Really, leaving here is no different than when we came in."

"The No. 23 is tore up worse than what we were," Ren said post-race. "We gained three points after getting wrecked and tore all to heck on the first lap. It's what the Truck Series is about. Next week at Homestead it's going to come down, if we're both in the top 10 it's by one position if we're equal in leading laps."

Ren said he was making up for Benson's lack of stress.

"When you get down to these last few races it's just bad anyway -- I mean it's just stressful," Ren said. "The thing of it is, it's stressful on me but you've got to try to not let the guys see how much stressed you are. Like I told them [Friday], 'don't beat ourself, let's have fun, just do what you do and it's all going to work out.'

"Everything happens for a reason. I believe in fate and what it is, is what it is [so] one of us going to win next week."

"Nobody has got the advantage anymore -- whoever is going to win this is going to have the least amount of luck," Hornaday said. "No advantage, no nothing. This is so cool to come down [to this]. I was just talking to the guys and just laughing. That's all we can do, just laugh at a night like this.

"Man, [my truck] is tore up. I was going to take that thing to Homestead. I'm not taking it now. Darn Homestead. Man, it's going to be tough down there. It's going to be nerve-wrecking. We're going to be biting fingernails and turn gray."

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