Trucks Ready For Last Round
11-12-2008 6:51 pm

After 24 long races, an epic, 11-month battle waged from Florida to Southern California and New Hampshire to Michigan is about to come down to the bitter end.

Friday night at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the season-ending Ford 200 will decide whether Johnny Benson wins his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Championship or whether Ron Hornaday Jr. captures his fourth.

As scenarios go, this one is as simple as they come: Benson leads Hornaday by 3 points. Whoever finishes ahead of the other in the 25th and final race of the NCTS likely will be the champion. "Likely" is an added caveat because if Benson finishes one position behind Hornaday but leads a lap and Hornaday doesn't, Benson takes the title. By the same token, if Benson finishes one spot behind Hornaday and leads the most laps, while Hornaday leads a lap, Benson would also win. If the two end tied in points, Hornaday will take the title on the basis of his six victories this season to Benson's five.

But the odds strongly suggest a mano a mano fight to the finish: one driver finishes ahead of the other and the one who does, wins. Period.

Since the late NASCAR statistician Bob Latford designed the current points system on a bar napkin in the Boot Hill Saloon prior to the 1975 season, only once has any points race been tighter in any of NASCAR's top three divisions.

That was in 1979, when Darrell Waltrip entered the final Sprint Cup race of the season 2 points up on Richard Petty. But in the L.A. Times 500 at the now-defunct Ontario Speedway in Southern California, Petty finished fifth and took the title by 11 points over Waltrip, who came home eighth in the races. It was the seventh and final Cup championship for the legendary Petty.

Just as the two NASCAR Cup icons waged a titanic battle nearly three decades ago, the two kings of the Truck Series are doing much the same thing this year.

Statistically, Benson and Hornaday have been as close to dead even this year as possible. Though Hornaday's No. 33 Camping World Chevrolet Silverado has visited victory lane this season once more than Benson's No. 23 Toyota Certified Used Vehicles Tundra, the two drivers have an identical number of top-five (14) and top-10 (17) finishes.

And while this title fight is virtually dead even, several factors tilt the balance ever-so-slightly in Hornaday's favor. The biggest among them is a NASCAR rule change in early September mandating that the Toyotas — and only the Toyotas — go to a smaller taper spacer in the engine intakes, which cut an estimated 15-20 horsepower from the Toyota engines.

Since the rule went into effect, Hornaday has finished ahead of Benson on the track in seven of eight subsequent races, amassing 116 more points than Benson during that period. And if you throw out the results from Martinsville Speedway, where Hornaday led the first 154 laps but ran out of gas three laps from the end, the discrepancy gets even bigger. In the seven other races in the post-spacer period, Hornaday outpointed Benson by a whopping 220 points.

Three other factors tilt the odds slightly towards Hornaday: First, Hornaday has led 1289 laps this season to just 498 for Benson. Second, Hornaday has been in this situation before and prevailed.

Last year, Mike Skinner — Benson's teammate at Bill Davis Racing — came into Homestead 29 points behind Hornaday. But Skinner had a rear axle problem during the race and finished 35th, so Hornaday's seventh-place run was more than enough to lock up his third NCTS title.

And finally, Hornaday's finishing average of 6.500 at Homestead is noticeably better than Benson's 10.250.

Individually, none of these differences is big enough to say Hornaday has a clear-cut advantage. In fact, at Homestead last year, Benson won the race, something in his favor. And on Friday night, if there is a mistake of any kind — a dropped lugnut by one team, a driver getting caught in a wreck or a pit-road speeding penalty, then all bets are off.

Twenty-four races in the books, one to go. Time for Benson and Hornaday to settle this thing once and for all. We'll see what happens Friday night.