Matt DiBenedetto and the Salvation of NASCAR
Note: I wrote this last year on the day that Matty D. got the Wood Brothers ride. Today, as the cars hit the track again for another season of NASCAR racing, it seemed a good time to actually post it.)
Today’s news of Matt DiBenedetto getting the Wood Brothers’ signature #21 ride for next year was met with a universal attaboy from the racing community. (Apologies to Paul Menard whose retirement I fear was overshadowed, good journeyman racer, wish you had a personality.)
So why is this relatively unknown driver causing so much joy amongst NASCAR fans, even estranged ones?
I’ve only recently gotten on the Matty D. bandwagon. When I first noticed his name in Cup a few years ago I figured he was yet another rich young punk whose daddy was writing checks to get him a ride, a no-talent rent-a-rider tooling around in the back, starting and parking.
Boy was I wrong.
I’m not an expert on this guy’s life, but what I have learned is Matt is the Pete Rose of NASCAR, Charlie-Hustling his way from ride to ride, improving himself and the team he was on with every step. Starting from a family operation with 2nd tier equipment at best, he got some breaks, some opportunities with Joe Gibbs’ development teams – not full-meal deals, just a ride or two.
Every race he was racing for his life. His career. His words, not mine.
This guy just wants to drive. Sorry, correction. Not just drive, win. He wants to win at the highest level of stock car racing. Heaven knows he came so close at Bristol this [now last] year, right after he learned his option was not going to be renewed at the now suckling-at-Toyota’s-teat Leavine Family Racing. (Sidebar – can’t blame them for the decision. They’ve got a business to run and being a 2-degree of separation factory team means the world to them. Christopher Bell will get that seat, mark my words).
Anyway. Bristol. So here’s this guy, racing for his life, racing his heart out, and finishes second. Winning would have been the story of the year. “Everyman racer wins arguably toughest race on the schedule in 2nd tier equipment”. Denny Hamlin passed him with only a few laps to go. DiBenedetto had his ill-handling car on his back, doing everything he could to carry it across the line. If the cumulative rooting of every fan on TV and in the crowd would have given him a couple more miles an hour, this guy would have won. But no. Yet another heartbreak.
Denny Hamlin even apologized for passing him in his victory speech.
So now cameras pan to Matt. He’s gutted. His heart and emotions are on his sleeve. And when he goes on camera in front of this track’s grizzled and NASCAR-savvy fans, something remarkable happens. They go wild.
They know what they just saw. And even with his heart pretty much broken, instead of holing up in his transporter, he went out in the crowd and signed autographs deep into the night. With his team’s sponsor – you know, the team that just fired him? – shirt on, fulfilling his obligations.
So back to the question, what is it with this guy?
Here’s my theory. Back when Dale Earnhardt (Senior) raced, he was the Workingman’s Racer. He unapologetically worked on his own cars, drove a tractor on his property, hunted, fished. He came from nothing and made it.
So here’s DiBenedetto, this man, not a kid, who seems to be getting kicked while he’s down at nearly every turn, but keeps coming back. Showing up. Making teams he’s on better. Hustling for rides, sponsorship, fans. A recent interview with him on the Dale Jr. Download showed a guy who hasn’t been through the “charm school” of NASCAR agents and sponsors, making him slick and pretty and just like Every Other Driver on the camera. He spoke well, but it was HIM. Honest. Funny. Wistful at times. Determined. I remember he said “every time a door has closed, another better one has opened”.
Today, we don’t have the next Workingman’s Racer. Instead, we have a new Everyman’s Racer. His story speaks to all of us who get up every morning to struggle for the legal tender, who weren’t handed anything. For all of us who gut it out and somehow remain hopeful, optimistic that tomorrow will be better. That we will get there, that we will touch our dreams. For all of us old racers who didn’t make it. For all of the ones that walked while money talked. He’s our touchpoint, the one who made it, the one that got through.
It’s almost religious.
In a time when the drivers of NASCAR have become sanitized, depersonalized automatons that have alienated a lot of the NASCAR old school fans, here’s a real guy. Everyman. And it’s what NASCAR needs. Something to bring the old guard back. Pairing him with arguably the most historic team in NASCAR, the Wood Brothers, is a match made in racing heaven.
We’ve been holding out for a hero. And for a lot of people, Matt DiBenedetto may just be it And bringing us all back to a NASCAR we thought was only a memory in the process. Thanks, Matt.
