Kyle Busch is the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup champion.
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HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) – There was a time early in Kyle Busch’s career that his talent could not save his job.
Kyle Busch has won his first NASCAR Sprint Cup championship. Harvick, who won this race en route to a title a year ago finished second this time, while Gordon was sixth and Truex 12th.
“I knew when those guys got by me, I just didn’t have what they had”, Gordon said about Busch and Harvick. His right leg and left foot were broken and any hopes he had to make a run at the Sprint Cup title would seemingly have to wait for another year. It happened the day before the Daytona 500 and put both his season and his career in jeopardy. “We just kept throwing stuff at it, and we never really found anything that really helped the vehicle that was like, ‘Oh, man, that’s what we needed right there”. He’s the last person Gordon sees before he takes the green flag, giving him a fist-pump as he pulls off pit road.
“There’s no doubt that just being a part of this day, wrapping up this incredible career, there’s no doubt in my mind that it didn’t take the championship for me to come out of here feeling like I’m on top of the world, and I am”, Gordon said.
“When he came back, he not only was driven and inspired, you could tell he was racing smarter, with more patience – just being more deliberate”.
Harvick failed in his bid to win back-to-back Sprint Cup championships, settling for yet another runner-up finish. He crashed two cars in his first five races back as he pushed too hard to try to earn a spot in the Chase.
He announced in January that this year would be his last in the iconic No. 24 Chevrolet, and most everyone believed he’d cap this final ride with another wonderful year on the track. I am also super proud of all our guys at the track, the pit crew and all the guys back at the shop in Denver.
Although he showed Saturday that his auto is fast enough to win – he had the best 10-lap average in final practice – he’s loose and approaching this last chance as if he’s playing with house money.
“That sendoff at the drivers’ meeting, you know, drivers are so competitive, and they don’t show … they might have it inside them, but to show it publicly, their appreciation for other competitors, just doesn’t happen like that very often”, he said.
“I was just trying to get prepared for my son’s birth and make sure that I could be there for the hospital trip and be able to stand and support Samantha and not worry about being in a wheelchair and stuck on the side of the room”. “Whatever it was going to be, it was going to be”. On the restart the top three drivers were Chasers – Harvick, Busch and Gordon.
He’d won eight Sprint Cup races in 2008 but finished 10th in points.
The Chase provided an early test for Busch as a wreck at New Hampshire and a 37th-place finish left him on the outside looking in of advancing to the Contender Round heading to Dover global Speedway.
There were four wins the next year, but a 13th-place finish in the final standings. I realized while watching Sunday’s race that I have never watched a Sprint Cup race without Gordon competing, so next season will certainly be unusual in that sense.
Busch required special dispensation to be eligble for the title, as NASCAR rules originally stated only drivers contesting the full season could feature in the Chase. In a way, Kyle Busch is sort of right.
Instead, this farewell tour had been just OK, and when he slipped through to the third round of NASCAR’s playoffs, he was winless on the year.
It was only fitting, then, that it was Gordon who heaped praise afterwards on his one-time Hendrick Motorsports teammate.
Thirteen times Harvick finished second this season, a modern era record (1972 to present), and the most since Bobby Allison’s 15 in 1970.
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“I don’t know if I quite understand life yet, but there’s something to be said about this year”, an emotional Busch said on his team radio.
