Don’t blow this, NASCAR.
Matt DiBenedetto is right there in front of you. Don’t let him wither away without a decent chance to make his mark on your sport.
First, a recap of what DiBenedetto has done for you lately.
He drives Toyotas for Leavine Family Racing, a team that has been steady but unspectacular. LFR is affiliated with Toyota’s super team, Joe Gibbs Racing, but DiBenedetto crew chief Mike Wheeler said his team’s cars are a step back from those of the Gibbs team.
DiBenedetto has caught the imagination of the NASCAR fan base, not only with his on-track performance but also with his we-can-do-this demeanor when he’s not in the car.
Rumored to be a driver likely to be replaced at the end of the season, he drew attention in late June with a fourth-place finish — his first in the top five — at the Sonoma Raceway road course in California.
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Thus began an every-other-race string of impressive finishes. He came home eighth in Daytona International Speedway’s summer event, fifth on the 1.058-mile oval in Loudon, N.H., sixth on another road course in Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Nevertheless, last week team owner Bob Leavine told DiBenedetto he would be released at the end of the season.
No surprise there. A top driver from the second-tier Xfinity Series is expected to graduate to the Cup Series and replace DiBenedetto. That’s the business of racing.
So what did DiBenedetto do? He graciously thanked Leavine Family Racing for the opportunity to run the Cup Series, said he wants to do all he can to give the team the best possible finishes the rest of this season.
That made him a storyline for last Saturday’s race. Will the classy driver find another ride for 2020? And would he be too dispirited to have another strong showing at Bristol Motor Speedway — a banked .533-mile oval where 15-second laps put an extra premium on both skill and daring?
He darn near won the race.
DiBenedetto was never far from the lead. With 105 laps to go, he evaded a block by Erik Jones (one of the Gibbs regulars) to take the lead.
Denny Hamlin, also a Gibbs driver, is having a great season and is perhaps the Cup Series’ hottest driver. He was a few seconds behind DiBenedetto and gaining bit by bit. Then DiBenedetto lost a big chunk of his lead when Ryan Newman, in the process of going a lap down, resisted so much that DiBenedetto sustained a dented fender as he completed what could have been a routine pass.
Hamlin soon caught the leader, and with 12 laps to go swung inside and passed DiBenedetto. They finished that way.
After the race, Hamlin won cheers from the crowd when he lamented it was the plucky DiBenedetto he had to pass for the win.
For his part, DiBenedetto was almost weeping with the emotion of his best Cup race, so close to victory at the end of a week when he’d learned he would no longer drive for this team in 2020.
DiBenedetto had no quarrel with Newman’s tough, if unnecessary, battle for racing room. And racing for a Cup Series win with superstar Hamlin, he said, was what he had dreamed of as a young driver getting experience at Hickory Speedway and Tri-County Speedway in North Carolina.
Those speedways are part of DiBenedetto’s appeal. Old-guard fans want their Cup drivers to rise from short tracks steeped in NASCAR tradition. Hickory and Tri-County fill that bill.
But he’s originally from California, so he adds geographic appeal. And DiBenedetto mixes in cultural diversity. He is palpably proud of what he called his “full Italian“ heritage in an interview earlier this year. He said he likes his middle name, Guido, as a nickname.
Saturday night’s Bristol crowd went wild for Guido, hanging around after the race and cheering mightily when he was being interviewed on the track’s jumbo screen. Social media, so often little more than gripe central, erupted with praise as well.
Is this clear enough for you, NASCAR? This guy needs a ride, a really good one, in 2020. And you need him — a classy, talented driver who has forged a bond with fans.
By NASCAR, I mean all the key elements — series officials, car owners, sponsors, manufacturers who have cars in the series, track presidents such as Richmond Raceway’s Dennis Bickmeier and Martinsville Speedway’s Clay Campbell.
Get together in a room and figure out what it takes to have Matt Guido DiBenedetto in a contending Toyota, Ford or Chevrolet next season. Don’t let him languish on a team that has next to no chance of running up front. Maybe he won’t be a star, but he deserves a decent shot.
Not standard procedure to shepherd a driver into a good ride? Well, this is a crucial moment for the sport. After a tough decade of declines in attendance and TV ratings, NASCAR appears to be regaining its footing.
At some tracks, the crowds, though hard to judge, appear to be better this year than last. TV numbers have been up slightly for many races.
Many of those fans have embraced DiBenedetto. This is no time to treat their new-found enthusiasm as if it didn’t really matter.
Randy Hallman, a veteran NASCAR writer, is retired from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. His column appears weekly in the NASCAR Report. Email him at fullthrottlerh@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @RandyLHallman.