At Homestead, Jeff Gordon poised for his greatest accomplishment yet

Matt Kenseth, who has been suspended for the past two races since intentionally running into championship contender Joey Logano, was asked by NASCAR to meet with Logano on Friday.

Yet a driver can no more stumble into Sprint Cup’s Final Four than an NFL football team can stumble into a record of 9-0. To mark the occasion, during the drivers’ meeting that day the King gave each of his fellow competitors a money clip inscribed with their name and starting position. He celebrated that win as if it was the first victory of his career.

On Sunday, Gordon will go after the most unlikely of career endings in motor racing. And if we’re the ones celebrating on Sunday, it’ll be, ‘Here we are.

In his second-to-last run, the defending champ wasn’t pleased: “That just not as good anywhere”.

“We’re not going to react to anything that’s part of the traditional part of hard, aggressive racing”, France said. I am not surprised how well Martin has done with us.

Gordon’s 31st-place finish that day was no indication of what was to come.

Harvick has tried to diffuse talk that he’s the heavy favorite Sunday to hold off Martin Truex Jr., Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch at the same track where he clinched his 2014 crown.

Logano, who swept all three races in the third round of the Chase, said a win at Homestead would bookend a season that began with a Daytona 500 victory. “I’m having a blast”.

“I didn’t think anything could top that”, he said. I have no idea.

“For the last couple of years, you can tell he reacts in the vehicle differently”.

Although he showed Saturday that his vehicle 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.

Truex was seventh on the speed chart, and Harvick was 16th. Busch was 17th while Harvick was 26th at 169.972.

Like Truex, Busch has been consistent during the Chase, finishing outside the top 15 only twice.

A former high school wrestler, Harvick has had a season’s worth of dustups just in the nine-race Chase alone. “I’m going to take a few advice from a six time champion [Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson] and play a few music and tune it out”.

And he dreams of doing so in triumphant fashion, coming around Turn 4 side-by-side with a fellow championship challenger on the last lap and then winning by a nose after a little “quintessential NASCAR” racing. “No mechanical failures or DNFs; that’s a huge accomplishment for this team”. He led 355 laps of the 400 lap race, cruising into the Challenger Round.

A penalty for an uncontrolled tire in the pits with 24 laps to go sent Busch to the back of the pack on a restart, and he bumped with Darrell Wallace Jr. soon after. (11th) and Kevin Harvick (13th) will start behind pole-winner and non-Chase driver Denny Hamlin, who had a final-round time of 176.655 miles per hour.

Coverage will also be available online via NBC Sports Live Extra. When he arrived in the sport in 1993, aged 21 and hailing from California, he started a youth movement in NASCAR, which up until that point was dominated by older drivers from the southern American states. For starters, Homestead-Miami is his favorite track – he has finished worse than 11th at Homestead just once since 200. At least this phase of his life, that is, as Gordon competes in his 797th and final Cup Series race, searching for his 94th win and fifth series championship. But once again, Gordon proved his critics wrong, winning the 2001 championship with new crew chief Robbie Loomis.

“It’s awesome for the sport, and it makes you feel good for Jeff and everything that he’s done for the sport”, said three-time champion and former Gordon rival Tony Stewart.