No, Gordon didn’t win a fifth championship in his final race.
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Kyle Busch, who missed the first eleven races of the season because of injuries suffered in a crash at the Daytona Speedway in February, has won NASCAR’s top championship by outrunning defending champion Kevin Harvick.
Gordon will easily be a first ballot NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee, based not only on his statistics – 93 Cup wins and four series championships – but also on his commitment and contribution to the growth of NASCAR.
Busch’s title run represents a remarkable reversal of fortune that will go down in NASCAR lore.
“He’s got that internal strength”, his brother, Kurt Busch, told USA TODAY Sports, his voice cracking.
How remarkable was it that Trevor Bayne won the Daytona 500 in 2011, one day after his 20 birthday, in only his second Cup start? “I just wish him well”.
He was sidelined until the Sprint Cup’s All-Star Race.
“A dream of a lifetime, a dream come true”, Busch called it as fireworks boomed overhead.
“I don’t know that anybody could have ever dreamt of this year”, Busch said. All the turmoil, all the things that I went through, that my wife went through, that my family went through, all those around me that they went through. As long as I get to do my job and find a few ways in between that to block a few things out, get my mind in the right place. “I don’t really know if there was a right one or a wrong one to be honest”.
And that was before the driver Gordon considers the greatest in history – Mario Andretti – showed up at the track to support Gordon, and before reigning Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton arrived.
A major wreck early in the race knocked out fan favourite Dale Earnhardt Jr., Clint Bowyer, Aric Almirola, Casey Mears and others.
The green came back out on lap 36.
NASCAR granted him a waiver to race for the championship if he earned a berth in the playoffs, and he did it by winning four of five races at midseason.
The finish was the thirteenth time this year Harvick has finished second, a NASCAR record, breaking Bobby Allison’s record set in 1972.
Truex took only two tires and was off pit road first followed by Keselowski, Kyle Busch, Harvick and Logano who had all taken four.
Martin Truex Jr., who found himself the surprise contender for the Sprint Cup, finished twelfth. “The 18 auto, he just had us beat for the most part”.
But after falling back again, Truex gambled again on Lap 215.
During green-flag pit stops on lap 140, Truex’s vehicle caught fire momentarily as sparks ignited when his crew was re-fuelling.
Busch, starting on the outside of the front row of a restart with seven laps left, got past Brad Keselowski and led the rest of the way. With four laps to go, the lead was 1.1 seconds. Petty gave each driver in that race a “Petty blue” money clip. “But on the other hand I am proud about how far this Furniture Row team progressed this season”.
Add Kyle Busch to the list of fact-is-stranger-than-truth NASCAR champions. “I don’t know why Brad chose to the bottom, but he gave me the top and I thought, ‘This is interesting.’ It did put Harvick behind me so I knew I just had to protect whatever Harvick tried to do if he was going to shoot the middle or shoot the gap or whatever it was going to be”. “As soon as I saw her, I got emotional”.
But once he was back in the auto, there was no stopping Busch.
Harvick finished second, with Gordon sixth and Truex 12th. “To come from 24th in points last year to fourth this year, that’s a pretty big deal”, concluded Truex.
“We just stayed the same and never could fix the problems that we had”, Harvick said.
Be proactive – Use the “Flag as Inappropriate” link at the upper right corner of each comment to let us know of abusive posts. “That wasn’t what it was going to be all about, so I had a little man pushing for me to get better”.
“It’s been a great couple of years and I’m looking forward to next year”. Larson was able to gather his vehicle back up and made another run on Busch and took second on lap 253. After a year ago, I felt like we had everything go our way way and tonight, it didn’t go our way.
“We led a lot of laps”, said third-place man Keselowski, who led a race-high 86 laps on Sunday.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t win, and that’s what we wanted to do”, Logano said. We took 2 early, and it didn’t work out.
As Gordon’s auto rolled off pit road to start the race, pit crew members from all the teams stood along the pit wall to clap and honor him. “I’m not sure what we were missing, but we were missing something”.
“We struggled all weekend with the auto”, Truex said. “I think when the sun went down we missed a little something and didn’t quite have it when the track cooled down”.
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The title is the fourth NASCAR crown for Joe Gibbs, a three-time Super Bowl winning coach, but first since 2005. “He’s a class act, who has done so much for the sport of NASCAR”.
