Kyle Busch clinches his first Sprint Cup title

Kevin Harvick and Jeff Gordon were the final four drivers in the race vying for the season championship.

It seemed more destined to happen when Gordon won for the ninth time at Martinsville Speedway in the first race of the third round of this Chase, benefiting from Matt Kenseth’s punt of race-leading Joey Logano to earn an automatic berth in the one-off final here. Kyle Busch, who also won Sunday’s race, won his first Sprint Cup Series championship. Although Hamlin went three laps down, fought his way back to the lead lap.

And finally, Sunday’s 267 dominant laps over the three other title contenders – including his boyhood hero – that ended in a victory in the Ford EcoBoost 400 and his first Cup championship. Gordon is the only driver to win his way in.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t win, and that’s what we wanted to do”, Logano said.

Kevin Harvick sat at the dais, scratched his face and cracked a small smile watching Kyle Busch celebrate the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship on TV.

Later, near race time, before he climbed in his vehicle for the last time, Gordon walked toward it with his 7-year-old daughter Ella Sofia, her strawberry blonde hair riffling in the South Florida breeze. Truex Jr. finished 12th. Jeff Gordon would be the first of the Championship Four to grab the race’s lead, making a dramatic three-wide move on the inside of the track following an early restart, but he’d hold it for less than ten laps, and by lap 50, Gordon would find himself struggling to keep pace with the leaders in what was the four-time champion’s final race.

“I could see a lot of scenarios in my head where the four of us are running in the top five a lot of that race”.

“To go up against those guys here tonight and to score this victory for this No. 18 Toyota Camry was phenomenal”, said Busch. I said, ‘This is interesting.

“I’m really proud of my team”, Truex said. The field headed to pit road, Busch asked for an adjustment, and was second on the restart with seven laps remaining. Despite that, he led for one lap. “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”. “We have a lot to build on for the future”. A slow pit stop brought him out in 11th place, worst of the four Chase contenders.

“The big news is: I’m driving today”, McGraw joked.

“We just stayed the same and never could fix the problems that we had”, Harvick 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, you know?”

To Carol Bickford, though, he is Jeffrey Michael Gordon, the boy who dreamed of racing and excelled in ways few had.

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.

NASCAR vice chairman Mike Helton is warning teams not to interfere with the championship race.

“It is absolutely incredible to be in these shoes”, said Gordon on the NBC telecast.

“When I was there with (team owner) Rick Hendrick after the race, it definitely – if he’d have kept going with the things he was saying, it was going to get out of control there”, Gordon said after the race.

Truex, in his second season piloting Denver’s No. 78 auto, propelled the outsider team – the Sprint Cup’s only team based outside North Carolina – into a fourth-place finish overall, their best finish since debuting in 2005.