In that race, Benson led for 39 laps and nearly pulled off one of the biggest upsets in history before being overwhelmed by a pack of drafting Fords whose drivers decided it was better to follow Dale Jarrett.

	With no sponsorship problems this year, Johnny Benson is looking to improve on his Daytona showing.

They were right. Jarrett won for the third time, and Benson settled for 12th place.

Now he's back with one of the fastest Pontiacs and will start sixth Thursday in one of two qualifying events to set most of the field for Sunday's $11 million race. And this time, the 37-year-old driver from Grand Rapids, Mich., can relax.

"Last year, we went without a sponsor and pretty low in the points, so we were sweating making the race the whole time," Benson said.

After the impressive run at Daytona, a sponsor developed, then stopped paying the bills. The team came close to leaving the car at the shop, but another sponsor permitted it to complete the season an impressive 13th in the standings.

This year, Valvoline has come aboard in a unique arrangement of sponsorship and part ownership in the car. So, Benson is happy.

"This year, we are not worried about sponsors anymore," he said. "And we aren't worried about provisionals because we are 13th in points."

Without enough owners points, a team cannot get in a race with one of seven provisional starting spots. It must qualify as one of the 36 fastest cars.

Benson backed up his 500 performance by leading for 21 laps in the July race at Daytona before finishing 13th, proving again that he can go fast on the 2½-mile oval.

But it sure didn't look that way to Benson and crew chief James Ince in the days leading up the last year's 500.

"We struggled in the qualifying race, and I remember telling James that if we didn't get the car fixed, we were going to miss the race," Benson said. "We hung on and made it, and then we did pretty good in the 500."

Because of that, Benson has hopes for another impressive run Sunday. Also, the sponsorship has enabled the team to test more frequently and log considerable wind-tunnel time.

Should those factors make him a legitimate contender in the season-opening race? Benson thinks they might, but won't predict the kind of success he had last year.

But he thinks he'll be very competitive. Another sign of confidence might be the team's decision to leave last year's Daytona car in the shop in North Carolina and use another,

"Everyone is going to say we almost won twice, but we think we have a better car," Ince said of the choice. "The old car almost won Daytona. "This new car is the one we hope wins Daytona."

Ince said data from the wind tunnel and testing make him believe the team made the right choice.

"But you never know until the race starts," he said.

How it ends is of more interest to Benson, winless in 161 career starts. He passed up an opportunity last year to attempt a block of the Jarrett-led pack as it thundered down the backstretch next to Lake Lloyd.

"One driver told me if he had been in my car, they would still be fishing all the Fords out of the lake," Benson said. "But we were a sitting duck and we just had to run them fair and square.