Polesitter Ron Hornaday led the first 154 laps of Saturday’s Kroger 200 Craftsman Truck Series race at Martinsville Speedway, but Johnny Benson led the next 46—including the one that counted.
With Hornaday running out of gas during a five-lap sprint to the finish, Benson cruised to the finish line .785 seconds ahead of Dennis Setzer, and ahead of a multi-car wreck off Turn 4. Rick Crawford was third, followed by Kyle Busch and Todd Bodine.
“I don’t know what to say. (Crew chief) Trip Bruce and those guys did a great job and week in and week out they always build me great trucks to go race with. I learned a lot today,’’ said Benson. “I watched a bunch of different lines down there (in Cup practice) and (Bruce) gave me a good truck no doubt, but just a couple of different lines down there really worked out great.”
“I love Martinsville. I don’t like sometimes how it races here but it’s cool to be in victory lane here, I can tell you that,” he added.
Benson moved into the series lead with his fifth victory of the season. He went from 39 points behind to 65 points ahead when Hornaday ran out of gas with three laps to go.
Hornaday said he tried to save fuel all race long, but just came up short.
“We win and lose as a team, so we’ll take this one and go on,” he said.
“We’ve just got to get better fuel mileage,” said Hornaday, the defending series champion. “We’ve got to go back and figure this thing out. I don’t know where this puts us [in the standings], but it was a bad day for us. I was saving fuel the whole time—trying to. I was shutting the truck off, flipping it back on. Still didn’t save enough.”
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