Hornaday's chances for a fourth title ended less than 10 laps from the end of Friday night's Ford 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, when crew chief Rick Ren made an ill-advised call to bring Hornaday for four fresh tires on his Camping World Chevrolet Silverado. Hornaday came in third and exited pit road 13th, while Benson was eighth when the yellow-flag flew and picked up two spots to sixth. When the race ended, Benson was seventh and Hornaday eighth, with Benson winning the title by a mere 7 points.

But Hornaday was as classy and composed in defeat as he was during his three championship runs, refusing to blame his crew chief and congratulating his friend and rival Benson.

"I'm not going to second-guess," Hornaday said flatly. "If we would have come back and won the race, it would have been the call of the century. We lost it. I mean, that's all there is to it. I'm going to go back and drink a beer over it, and hopefully we'll talk about it." 

Hornaday admitted that there had been any number of mistakes in earlier races — running out of fuel at Martinsville, crashing on the first lap at Phoenix last week — that cost him a lot more points than the pit call at the end of Friday night's race.     

"We'll be all right," Hornaday said. "We're happy with second. We gave that one away last week, and coming down here if we would have played our cards right, you never know what happens in racing. It all goes back to Homestead and goes back to Daytona, it goes back to a flat tire, it goes back to running out of fuel. If I had to pinpoint one thing, Johnny Benson and them guys, a great year, and we came up one position short."

Hornaday's boss, Kevin Harvick, didn't make any excuses, either. "Obviously it was great to watch all year, and the back and forth, and it felt like we had it in hand there," Harvick said. "And then they pitted and they lost. That's just the way it goes, and everybody tried hard. … It's one of those deals where, like I say, I felt like they had it in hand, the way that the pit strategy worked out, it worked out. I feel like they probably would have won the race if they don't pit. But there's a lot of different ways of looking at it, and we lost."

For virtually the entire 2008 NCTS season, Benson, Hornaday and their respective crews slugged it out like the heavyweights they are. Only one man could win the title, but both carried themselves like champions.

"I couldn't be more prouder for Johnny Benson," said Hornaday. "I'm really glad to see that he got an opportunity to do it. I know he's leaving Bill's stable next year and he's moving on, so that's good for Bill Davis and everybody else. That gives him more commodity going into next year. Johnny is just a heck of a racer."

Tom Jensen is the Senior NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com.  He is the author of "Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED," and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the President of the National Motorsports Press Association.  Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing.