Ron Hornaday, Jr. dominated three-quarters of the Power Stroke Diesel 200, but Johnny Benson came on strong in the late- stages of Friday night’s race at the O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis to score his second straight victory in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
Hornaday, who won last year’s race at ORP, led 153 of the first 161 laps. After running second to Hornaday for most of the evening, Benson made the outside pass and grabbed the top spot from the defending series champion with 39 laps to go. Then it was Benson’s show from there.
“Ron ran a great race, he really did,” Benson said. “But I was kind of watching what he was doing, watching his line, trying not to heat up my Goodyears too bad. So I just waited and bought my time.”
The victory was Benson’s third of the season and 12th of his truck career. He won last weekend at Kentucky and last month at Milwaukee.
Erik Darnell finished third, followed by Matt Crafton and Shelby Howard.
“When we did pass him and got the caution again, it was like, ‘Here we go again,”’ Benson said. “We were able to keep him at bay and do what we had to do.”
There were nine of the record-tying 11 cautions in the second half of the race, including one that took pole-starter Bobby East out of contention. Hornaday was still in front when Justin Marks hit the wall on the 153rd of the 200 laps, and Benson finally passed Hornaday for the lead shortly after the restart and stayed ahead the rest of the race.
“Second stinks, but we’ll take it,” Hornaday said. “Johnny had a dominant truck all day. We watched him in practice, and then he drove it a little better than we did at the end of the race.”
“He was smart enough to go to the top, and both of the trucks came out clean,” Hornaday said of the decisive pass. “We knew he was going to be strong all night. Johnny’s so good on these (short) tracks and he was really quick at the end.”
The final restart fell on Lap 198 of the 200-lap race. Hornaday gathered a final charge at Benson but his Chevrolet slipped high, allowing Benson to pull away.
Benson now leads Hornaday by 15 points in the season standings.
Brendan Gaughan, T.J.Bell, Busch, Mansfield winner Donny Lia and Mike Skinner closed out the top 10.
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