Team owner Joe Gibbs pumped his fists in frustration, but Busch remained calm in the auto.
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McGraw, a noted vehicle enthusiast, is settling for taking the mic as the headline act for a pre-race concert at NASCAR’s season finale. This championship is all for these guys, my wife, my family, everyone who has had to sacrifice so much to get me here to this place today, whether it was on my team right now, or on my teams in the past. He suffered those injuries in a hard crash in the season-opening NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Daytona worldwide Speedway. Lewis Hamilton and Mario Andretti were also there to watch the four-time Champion’s final race, but it wasn’t to be his day.
“It’s like right now the racing doesn’t matter as much as the relationship does”, Hendrick said afterward. The 30-year-old Busch was top finisher in the Ford EcoBoost 400 among championship beating out contending drivers Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon and Martin Truex Jr.
“It didn’t take the championship for me to come out of here feeling like I’m on top of the world”, Gordon said. He finished the final round strong with three top five finishes.
He followed up this season with three wins and rebounded from the brink of elimination in the Chase by winning the third playoff race at Dover to propel him the rest of the way as the heavy favorite.
“I have the real thrill the first of every month of trying to pay the bills”, Gibbs said, smiling. We came here and really tried everything we knew to put out our best performance.
The title makes the Busch brothers – Kurt won the 2004 championship – the second pair of brothers in NASCAR to win premier series championships.
At the time, no one would have dreamed that the 1992 finale would be the jumping-off point for a career that would see Gordon start a record 797 straight Cup races over 23 years, win 93 events – third-most all-time – and four championships. And I’m still waiting for that lump in my throat to leave from watching Gordon walk to his auto holding hands with his daughter, Ella, and the post-race embrace he had with longtime vehicle owner Rick Hendrick. “We felt like we had to take a really big swing at it”. From missed opportunities, like leading late at Martinsville in the year before getting a penalty, t0 cars that just didn’t seem to be fast enough to keep up with the pack, Gordon had a tough time during the regular season. He came off pit road in second place and quickly shot past race-leader Brad Keselowski on the re-start.
Jeff Gordon had planned to sleep in Sunday, but the excitement of his final Sprint Cup race and the chance to win a fifth series championship awoke him early.
“Yes and no”, Busch said.
“It’s pretty unbelievable – a dream of a lifetime, a dream come true”, Busch said. He could never find the oomph he needed in the No. 4 Chevrolet and was thumped by race victor Busch off the final restart. There aren’t too many drivers in NASCAR that can say they were the best at a certain track and there wasn’t only one track that was special to Gordon either, he had a few where he was simply better than the other drivers on the track. Busch spent the next 10 weeks away from the team to rehab his wounds, all the while being there for his pregnant wife, Samantha, as she was due to give birth to the couple’s first son in May.
“I never would’ve believed in a thousand years that this would happen the way that it did”, Busch said.
“Just having to re-go through the knee and to cut the knee open again in order to pull the rod out, that’s going to be the most traumatic part – and just having that have to heal and go back together and let the muscle get back together, and of course the tendon as well”.
And he will be better than ever once his team, Furniture Row, switches from Chevy engines to Toyota-incidentally, the official power plant of your 2015 Sprint Cup champion. “We won a race and ran up front for the majority of the season”.
Seven-time Sprint Cup champ Jimmie Johnson dropped to 35th after being ordered by NASCAR to fix illegal alterations to his right rear quarter panel on Lap 58. For some perspective, Dale Earnhardt was 29 before he ran his first full NASCAR Cup season.
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“Crew chiefs, pass this on to your spotters and drivers: Be sure this day concludes on a high note with no interference of a naturally progressed race”.
