Homestead, FL (My Sportsbook) - Johnny Benson captured his first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship Friday with a seventh-place finish in the Ford 200 at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. Benson finished the season just seven points ahead of Ron Hornaday, Jr., who finished one position behind Benson in eighth.

The points margin was the second closest in the 14-year history of the series. Hornaday defeated Jack Sprague by only three points to clinch his second title in 1998.

Benson, who won the Nationwide Series championship in 1995, set the mark for the longest time between titles across NASCAR's three major series. He also joined Greg Biffle as the only drivers to win both a Nationwide and Craftsman Truck Series championship.

In what was a seesaw battle in points between Benson and Hornaday throughout the race, Benson won the title thanks to great decision making from his crew chief Trip Bruce.

Benson ran no better than sixth for most of the race, while Hornaday ran among the top-five and led laps in the early-going.

But a caution for debris on Lap 90 set up a round of pit stops. Bruce made a gutsy call to place two new tires only on the No.23 Toyota, as Benson exited the pits first and gained eight positions. Hornaday, with four fresh tires, came out second.

Benson took the lead for the first time in the race and grabbed five bonus points for doing so.

Then Mike Skinner blew a right-front tire with 10 laps remaining. While most on the lead lap pitted, including Hornaday, Benson and Bruce took a championship gamble by staying on the track.

The caution set up a five-lap shootout to the finish with Brian Scott leading the way, while Benson ran in sixth and Hornaday held the 13th spot. Hornaday took four tires during his stop.

"If Ron didn't come in I was going to try tires," Benson said. "I knew that was probably not going to work. And then I thought I lost him when (Travis Kvapil) got by me there. I was just really bad there at the end. I thought that had lost us."

When the race resumed on Lap 130, Todd Bodine moved to the underneath of leader Brian Scott and took the top spot away from him heading into turn three. While Benson was protecting his points lead, Hornaday had moved up to the 10th spot. But Benson's teammate, Tayler Malsam crashed two laps away from the scheduled distance, setting up a green-white-checkered finish.

Hornaday passed two more trucks during the final two-lap shootout, but finished four-tenths of a second behind Benson's seventh position, as he came up short of claiming his second-straight and series-record fourth title.

"It was a good race," Hornaday said. "Johnny and I raced hard. That was a good call by Trip Bruce to put two tires on."

Bruce, in his second year with Benson at Bill Davis Racing, won his first series championship as a crew chief.

"We really didn't have the best truck here tonight," Bruce said. "The pit crew brought him out first, and we talked about pitting for two tires. When you do that, you sure do need to come out with the lead."

Benson avoided a penalty during his first stop when his crew did not stick tape on the rear spoiler of his truck, as per the rules. NASCAR officials warned the No.23 team the action had to be taken on their next stop, which they did.

Bodine started the 2008 season with a victory at Daytona International Speedway and ended the year by winning at Homestead. Bodine led only the final eight laps to score his third victory of the season and the 15th of his career.

"We had a terrible race truck," Bodine said. "It was not handling well at all. (My crew) got me a lot of spots on pit road and that made a big difference."

Bodine, the 2006 truck champion, ended the season third in points (-104).

Scott finished second.

Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch and Dennis Setzer completed the top-five.

The race was the last for Craftsman as they will end their 14-year agreement as title sponsor of the Truck Series at the end of this season.

The inaugural Camping World Truck Series season kicks off February 13, 2009 at Daytona.