Benjamin Stewart Parsons was born on the 16th of January 1941 in the small town of Ellerbe, North Carolina. When he was five years old he went to live with his great-grandmother in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Living in a wooden house with no running water or electricity "Mama Julia" instilled in Benny the need to strive for success in all that he does in life. Throughout his life Benny never forgot his humble rural roots and this showed in his relaxed demeanour and pleasant nature.

Benny Parsons (Courtesy or Wiki Commons)

After the end of the Second World War Benny moved to Detroit, Michigan with his family where his father operated a gas station and a taxicab business. Before becoming a race car driver he worked for his father, driving taxis or working in the service station and it was here, one evening in 1963 that a chance meeting would change his life. A truck carrying a race car pulled into the gas station and Benny got chatting to the occupants who told him that they were on their way to Mount Clemens Speedway, inviting him to join them. Not wanting to give up this opportunity Benny jumped at the chance and went with them.. The story is that the driver failed to turn up at the race track and Benny volunteered to drive the car. This year was also the year of his first visit to Daytona, he was a huge race fan and would have given anything to get into the garage area to be near the cars. The best part of the trip was when he bumped into H.B. Bailey’s ( a former NASCAR driver) wife in the hotel that they were staying. She gave him a pass to get in to the garage area. “It was the highlight of my life, getting inside the garage area and getting close to those race cars.” Benny was hooked and began his racing career on the Midwest short race tracks. The chance of a lifetime came on the 9th August 1964 at the Asheville-Weaverville Speedway in North Carolina when the Ford Motor Co. summoned two unknown drivers to an audition for a factory-backed ride in the 250-mile race for the NASCAR Grand National drivers. The two drivers Ford had their eye on were Cale Yarborough and Benny Parsons. Both drivers were strapped into 1964 Ford Galaxies and the race began. Both qualified in the top 10 in the 36-car field. During the race, Parsons had problems getting used to the powerful car on the fast track, and failed to impress Ford during this great opportunity. Though Benny early NASCAR efforts were unsuccessful ,his persistence paid off with a Daytona 500 victory in 1975. Benny soon made an impression on the Midwest short tracks, rising in the racing ranks and going on to become "Rookie of the Year" in 1965, together with two Automobile Racing Club of America, ARCA, championships in 1968 and 1969.

The next opportunity in NASCAR didn’t come until 1969 when L.G. DeWitt hired him as a substitute for Buddy Young who had been injured at Riverside. Buddy’s injuries took almost a year to heal and during this time Benny excelled in his performance, gaining 23 top ten positions in 45 starts. DeWitt decided to hire him on a more permanent basis. 1973 saw the DeWitt team with no sponsorship and they only had three cars available. Benny was chasing the championship.

1973 saw a unique points system introduced, awarding points not only for overall finish position but also for teach lap completed and so far Benny had completed 9311 laps out of a possible 10,258 by keeping the car running in most of the races, giving him, at this point, a lead of 194 points when entering the final race at Rockingham. The winner of this race would gain 371 points and five drivers were in a position to win the championship. Benny qualified as a strong fifth. As the lead cars were completing their early laps Johnny Barnes spun into a wall, bouncing off into the path of Benny, the cars hit hard and the axle on Benny’s Chevrolet was broken, the whole of the right side was torn away, suspension parts were all over the track and the car was totalled. Back in the pit many pit crewmen from several teams worked together, taking parts from a car that had failed to qualify, to reconstruct the car to keep his chance of winning alive. Amazingly, after a further 136 laps had been completed Benny drove back onto the track to drive to victory, taking the NASCAR Winston Cup Grand National Championship in one of the most spectacular way in the series history. "I was lower than the gutter when I first came back to the pits after the wreck," said Parsons. "We were out of it. Fifth place [in the NASCAR Winston Cup standings] was looking me dead in the eye. But I really got inspired when I saw everyone on our team and so many from the other teams swarming over my car. What they did was a real miracle." Benny’s' NASCAR Winston Cup career continued through the 1988 season. In addition to his title season in '73, he captured NASCAR's biggest event, the Daytona 500, in '75. He logged 21 victories in stock car racing's premier division, and was voted among the top 50 drivers in NASCAR history during the Golden Anniversary in 1998. His awards also include:- Inductee into the Court of Legends at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in 1964, Inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1994 and Inductee into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2005.

After his retirement, Parsons went into television commentary. He served as an analyst for NASCAR NEXTEL Cup broad¬casts starting in 1989 and remained a firm favourite with the fans until he passed away after complications after treatment for lung cancer in early 2007 at Charlotte, North Carolina.

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