WEST ALLIS, Wis. — There’s something about The Milwaukee Mile that suits Johnny Benson.
On Friday night, Benson, driving a Bill Davis Racing Toyota, claimed his first Craftsman Truck Series victory of the season, the 10th of his career and his third straight on the Wisconsin track, in the Camping World RV Sales 200.
“I thought our run was great, obviously,” Benson said. “The last pitstop got us out front. That’s probably what won us the race for sure. Once we got in that clean air and up front and we ran one or two corners under green when we went back after the lightening, I felt that I was going to be in pretty good shape.”
Benson dominated the event, first claiming the pole and then leading a race high 130 of the possible 200 laps.
On lap 147 under caution, the field dropped down pitroad for a cycle of pitstops. Benson’s crew got him out first while Rick Crawford, who led entering the pits, dropped to third on the exit. He was caught speeding off of pit road, however, and was forced to line up at the end of the restart line.
“That last segment, we were as good as we were all night long. I hate it for Rick that happened because he did have a great night going. But on the same token, we’ve got caught speeding down pit road already once this year, with the same type of scenario,” Benson said.
Unable to go back to green flag racing due to lightening, the grandstands were cleared and a red flag was displayed for more than 25 minutes. The restart came on lap 155 and Benson led to the finish, beating Matt Crafton by 2.530 seconds.
“We had a really good truck all night,” Crafton said. “He was definitely hard to beat. Clean air is everything at every race track we go to. I want to say, if we got out in front, we might have been able to beat him.”
Landon Cassill, Erik Darnell, who just barely edged out Benson at the finish line to take the win last weekend in Michigan, and Todd Bodine rounded out the top five.
Benson now leads Bodine by 50 markers.
Rookie Michael Annett and Ron Hornaday, Jr., who turned 50 on Friday, slid into the sixth and seventh positions.
Second to Benson, Crawford led the most laps of the night with 33 and was leading at the time of the caution flag for weather on lap 146, just prior to his speeding penalty. He regrouped from the deficit to claim an eighth-place finish.
“I gave one away. That’s my responsibility to drive pit-road speed, no matter what anybody else says on the radio. We got caught exiting pit road and if we just would have left him alone down there and not tried to race out of the pits, we had the truck to beat. Johnny knows it; everybody here knows it,” he said.
Terry Cook and Mike Skinner closed out the top 10.