Benjamin Stewart Parsons (July 12, 1941 – January 16, 2007) was an American NASCAR driver, and later an announcer/analyst/pit reporter on SETN, TBS, ABC, ESPN, NBC, and TNT. He became famous as the 1973 NASCAR Winston Cup Series champion, and was a 2017 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee. He was the older brother of former NASCAR driver, car owner, and broadcaster Phil Parsons of Phil Parsons Racing.
He was nicknamed "BP" and "the Professor", the latter in part because of his popular remarks and relaxed demeanor.
Parsons was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina. He spent his childhood years in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and played football at Millers Creek High School (now known as West Wilkes High School). Following high school, he moved to Detroit, Michigan where his father operated a taxicab company. Parsons worked at a gas station and drove cabs in Detroit before beginning his racing career. While working at the gas station one day, a couple of customers towing a race car invited him to a local race track. The driver of the car never showed up for that evening's race, and Parsons drove the car in a race for the first time later that night. Benny later moved to Ellerbe, North Carolina and always called it home.
Parsons began his NASCAR career by running a single race in 1964 for Holman-Moody with a young Cale Yarborough.
Parsons won the 1968 and 1969 ARCA championships, and then moved to Ellerbe, North Carolina.
Parsons had three top-ten finishes in four NASCAR races in 1969.
Benny joined the NASCAR circuit full-time in 1970 with crew chief John Hill. He had 23 top-ten finishes in 45 races, a pole at Langley Field Speedway, and finished eighth in the final point standings. He raced the No. 72 car for L.G. DeWitt/DeWitt Racing.
Parsons had eighteen top-ten finishes in 35 starts in 1971, including his first win at South Boston Speedway. He finished eleventh in the points.
In 1972, he had nineteen top-ten finishes in 31 races. He finished fifth in the final points standings.
In 1973, he won the NASCAR Winston Cup Series Championship with only one win, even though David Pearson won eleven races, although Pearson had only entered eighteen events. Parsons' consistency likely won him the championship: he had 21 top-ten and fifteen top-five finishes in the 28 events.
His improbable return to the track after an early crash cemented his 1973 championship at Rockingham, North Carolina. He saw his championship hopes start to fade as he was involved in a lap thirteen crash and his car was heavily damaged. He took to the pits to muster whatever he could out of the car and hope for a top five finish in the final standings. The rest of the garage was hoping to see the underdog unseat the mighty Richard Petty and joined in to help Parsons' crew put the car back together. Parsons miraculously got back on the track 136 laps later and completed enough laps to finish 25th and take the 1973 championship. Richard Petty, with the championship in his sights after winning the pole and seeing Parsons' accident, had engine trouble and was relegated to a 35th-place finish. The poor performance dropped Petty all the way to fifth in the final standings, as Cale Yarborough took the runner up spot on the season with his third-place effort. Yarborough finished 67 points behind the champion.
Parsons became the only person to win both ARCA and NASCAR championships.
Parsons finished between third and fifth in the final points standings from 1974 to 1980, and won the 1975 Daytona 500. He switched to the No. 27 entry for M.C. Anderson starting in 1979.
In 1979 at North Wilkesboro Speedway, Bobby Allison led most of the race, but in the final 150 laps, Darrell Waltrip caught Allison. The two hit together hard and Waltrip hit the front stretch wall. Waltrip began crowding Allison under the caution and got black flagged for the crowding. Parsons would win the race, but it would be his only win at the North Wilkesboro Speedway. Parsons' wife Terri, with whom he was married from 1992 until his death in 2007, became an investor in North Wilkesboro Speedway two years after his death.
He won the 1980 World 600 at Charlotte and the Los Angeles Times 500 (the final major motor race held at Ontario Motor Speedway) and finished third in points.
In 1981, he started racing in the No. 15 Bud Moore Ford Thunderbird. He had wins at Nashville Speedway USA, the final race at Texas World Speedway, and Richmond. In addition, he received his final top-ten points finish, finishing tenth that year.
Parsons qualified for the 1982 Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway at 200.175 miles per hour (mph), which was the first NASCAR qualification run over 200 mph (322 km/h).
Parsons raced in about half of the races between 1983 and 1986 for owner Johnny Hayes. Parsons' final career victory came in 1984 at the Coca-Cola 500 at Atlanta.