“If I win this race,” Parsons said while waiting for the final practice session to begin on Saturday, “it won’t make any difference in a thousand years. But the kind of person I am will make a difference.” This prevailing attitude which surrounds Parsons has given him the tag “too nice a guy,” a fellow not aggressive enough to put together a big season.

But then after his victory Parsons was asked about his supposed lack of aggressiveness on the race track. Was the 42-year-old, balding, mild-mannered veteran worried about scrapping for the lead just 18 laps from the finish with two drivers known for their unabandoned aggressiveness — Cale Yarborough and Dale Earnhardt? “If I get my shot, I’m going to take it,” he said, “and if I took it and they didn’t give it to me there was going to be a heckuva wreck.”

There was irony in the fact that Parsons, who led 228.5 miles of the 500-mile event, eventually outdueled both Yarborough and Earnhardt, despite the latter’s insistence on using “a whole lot of race track” after taking the lead on the day’s final caution. For three consecutive seasons, Parsons has had his ride taken out from under him and given to notorious leadfoots. Yarborough took over for Parsons in 1981 and on the M.C. Anderson team after Benny won three races for Anderson during the ‘80 season. Then Earnhardt took over for Parsons in ‘82 in the Bud Moore Ford after Benny won three races for Moore in ‘81.

The ultimate insult came during the 1982 season when he was fired in mid-season by Harry Ranier and replaced by Buddy Baker following a race at Talladega in which Parsons was judged not to be aggressive enough on the last lap as a member of the lead draft. (There was a bit of irony here, too, in that Baker was the polesitter at Atlanta but recorded a DNF.) Although the Ranier car was reported to be undergeared at Talladega during that race — and despite the fact Parsons became the first driver to qualify for a Winston Cup race at 200 mph by winning the pole for the race — Benny nevertheless was let go from the team that prides itself on being able to run strong on the big tracks.

“I’m not aggressive enough for some car owners,” he said with a shrug, “and I am aggressive enough for others.” In other words, the value and ability of Parsons as a race car driver is determined by the eye of the beholder. In Parsons’ case, the most beholden eye is his own.

Parsons has had a solid career, winning the Grand National championship in 1973 (although he won just one race that season) and 21 races in his career. But he never seems to have gotten the big breaks necessary to put him with a team and in equipment that would result in a big season. (Or maybe Benny just wasn’t aggressive enough off the track to make it happen. “You have be aggressive both places,” he agrees.)

Parsons’ current ride with the relatively modestly financed Johnny Hayes Copenhagen team is remarkably similar to his situation through most of his career. From the very outset of his career, nice guy Benny has been unseated from the big rides and then has made the most of it with a team of lesser finances. In 1963, for example, the Ford factory had one ride left on its factory team, and Parsons and Yarborough were selected to vie for the seat in a Grand National race at the Asheville-Weaverville half-mile track in North Carolina, driving factory-prepped Fords. Parsons, who had moved from his native North Carolina mountain home to Detroit (where he supported himself by driving a taxi) had been impressing the factory folks up north with his prowess on Midwestern short tracks.

“I think I led the race for a while,” recalls Yarborough, “and I finally went out with a bad radiator. But I ran good, ran up front, ran strong. And Benny had some problems. And so when it was all over, they said I had the job. It was a little bit cruel, wasn’t it, to bring two people down and say, ‘All right, one of you is going to be on the Ford Motor Co. racing team.’ I don’t know. If I had lost, it would have been cruel as hell, I’ll tell you that. I don’t know whether I’d be in the racing business now or not. I might be driving a tractor on a farm in South Carolina.”

Parsons, who says he owes his tenacity to his grandmother — “she raised three generations in the mountains with absolutely nothing” — responded to the cruel defeat by returning to the Midwestern short tracks. “The toughest things were those early years,” he recalls, “when I didn’t have any money and owed everybody; then I’d blow an engineer and wonder, ‘Should I quit?’”

Parsons eventually succeeded, winning the ARCA championships in 1968 and 1969 befoe joining the ranks of the Grand Nationals in 1970 with the L.G. DeWitt team. Although not as well financed as some of its competitors, the team won 12 races in nine years with Parsons as the driver. In 1973 the team won the Grand National championship by finishing consistently (and by rebuilding Parsons’ wrecked car during the final race of the season at Rockingham, down the road apiece from Benny’s home in Ellerbe). In a way, that 1973 championship is the hallmark of Parsons’ style. Easy on equipment, he drives the first 400 miles, then races for the final 100 — a style developed in the early days when he was concerned about saving his equipment since he had no budget. It was also a style championed by Richard Petty and David Pearson, among others, and one that was dictated by the poor financial condition of Grand National racing at that time.

Yet the image persists in Parsons’ case that he is not aggressive enough and just too nice a guy, despite some evidence to the contrary. Another memorable race by Parsons that took place not far from Ellerbe — where Parsons is known for his annual Christmas charity for the area’s indigent children — was his World 600 victory at Charlotte in 1980. There Darrell Waltrip almost ran Parsons off the track three laps from the finish. “I passed him on the inside,” Parsons told reporters in the press box afterward, “and he almost ran me into the grass. I felt like it was my last shot and I had to keep going.”

Parsons, then, will take what he believes is rightfully his on a race track, but he will never endanger himself or another driver by trying to bluff his way or muscle his way into victory lane by driving his car like a raging bull. He is too concerned about his fellow man and his own human role. And if that’s being too nice a guy, so be it. “No matter what else happens in this racing business,” he says, “when I’m through, no one can say Benny Parsons was a jackass.”

(Jonathan Ingram can be reached at jingram666@cs.com.)