The dream came true Sunday as Busch won his first Sprint Cup championship, outracing Gordon, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. in a one race, winner-take-all race for the title. He crashed into a concrete wall the day before the Daytona 500 and broke his right leg and left foot.
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At the start of the Chase, a confident Harvick said about the dominant Joe Gibbs Racing drivers, “We’re going to pound them into the ground”.
“I don’t know what the hell happened”, Bowyer said.
On Sunday Jeff Gordon proudly walked the track with his daughter Ella Gordon prior to the start of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Harvick, who finished second in the race and in the Cup standings, never seriously challenged after the final restart.
“To drive for one of the best vehicle owners, if not the best, and drive the best race cars and work with the best people, and that’s why I have the wins and championships that I have and why we did what we did here, today, in the final race, battling for a championship”, Gordon said. The 30-year-old Busch missed the first eleven Sprint Cup races of the season, then went on a tear and won four of his first eight races back.
There was a strong sentimental push for Gordon to go out on top in his final race. And that’s win this championship by winning the race was something special.
“This guy has been following me since 1995”, Gordon said.
“I think when you race your whole life and you accomplish what you’ve raced for your whole life, it’s exciting”, Harvick said. He now moves on to a broadcasting career with Fox.
A crash on Lap 96 took Petty out of the race in 35th place, hardly a fitting end for a driver who had accumulated 200 victories and seven championships while rewriting the NASCAR record books.
Truex, the underdog driving for single-car team Furniture Row Racing, also didn’t have enough in his Chevrolet to contend despite a handful of gutsy pit calls the team used out of desperation. Never did I think I’d race against u for wins.
After qualifying 11th, Truex knew that crew chief Cole Pearn was going to have to take a big swing in making adjustments to make his vehicle competitive. By the time Harvick got to second place, Busch was long gone. Busch was running in the top three when a caution came out for debris with 11 laps remaining. But his team owner, Joe Gibbs, believes it was a critical stage in his overall maturation-right up there with getting married, and becoming a father six months ago. As the green flag dropped, Busch shot ahead of Keselowski, with Harvick close behind.
Brad Keselowski and two other non-Chase drivers – Joey Logano and Kyle Larson – finished third through fifth.
“Pretty unbelievable”, a choked up Busch said. “I didn’t want to come back and not be ready to contend for Top 5s”, he said at the time, after winning at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
There was a time early in Kyle Busch’s career that his talent could not save his job.
Busch has been known for showing equal amounts of talent and temperament. 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. He won 93 races in 23 full seasons. The system has been tweaked several times and is in the second year of an elimination format that sends four drivers to Homestead to race for the title.
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“I’m really optimistic and looking forward to being the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion next year and doing all the things that a champion is supposed to do”, Busch said. It was a gift Gordon had planned to give the team owner he describes as NASCAR’s greatest for a while and wasn’t the only gift he handed out over the weekend.
