Busch wins 1st Sprint Cup title

Busch, who opened the season in a hospital bed, needled his coach after the race that perhaps he shouldn’t have rushed to sign the deal. – Busch cemented one of the greatest comeback stories not only in motor racing but in all of professional sports.

Kyle Busch claimed the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup title with victory in the Homestead decider, despite missing the season’s first 11 rounds with leg injuries. Kyle has won 154 races in NASCAR’s top three tiers since his debut in the truck series in 2001 and won the Xfinity Series title in 2009.

“Going through the rehab, it was hard”.

“I leaned on Kyle Busch pretty heavily”, he said. “To put it all together here tonight, this night wasn’t all that hard”.

And on the day and week that started out as a long goodbye to NASCAR superstar Jeff Gordon in his final Sprint Cup race with a championship on the line, it was Busch who ended up with the champagne shower.

Kyle Busch is the 2015 Sprint Cup champion and the race victor at Homestead.

“I’m a little disappointed we weren’t more of a threat in the championship”, said Gordon, who last won it all in 2001.

Gordon was the overwhelming sentimental favorite.

These viewership records were accomplished despite the green flag being dropped about an hour and a half later than scheduled due to a rain delay. That was about as good as he would be the rest of the race as he struggled mightily with the handling of his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.

“I just wanted everybody to have something as an appreciation from me to them of what they meant to me racing against them over all the years”, Gordon said.

Gordon will retire after Sunday’s season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where he pushed aside a season of mediocrity and clawed his way into the championship picture.

“It’s going to be incredible, just to be a Sprint Cup Series champion and to carry that label and come to Las Vegas to celebrate, hopefully, with a lot of my hometown fans I drove with at The Bullring”, Busch said.

“I’ve learned a lot in life, and there’s no such thing as a ideal day in a flawless life, just like there’s no such thing as a ideal race vehicle”, Gordon said. Martin Truex Jr.’s Cole Pearn-run single-car team gave it all they had but it was far from being enough when the chips were down.

“We really felt like without trying something really different, we weren’t going to get there”, Truex said.

“It seemed like the 18 got better and we didn’t get any better”. Kevin Harvick was second, 1.553 seconds behind.

Two laps later, a wreck involving such drivers Dale Earnhardt Jr., Casey Mears, Clint Bowyer, Ty Dillon, Aric Almirolda and Ricky Stenhouse brought out another caution.

Busch and Harvick, on the other hand, ran inside the top five throughout the race, both of them leading laps, 46 for Harvick, 41 for Busch. And while he could have just played it safe and try to finish second behind Brad Keselowski, he pulled out his ace on the re-start. “The dream of a lifetime, a dream come true”, Busch said. Of it starting and then accelerating its climb to become the dominant racing series in North America. Known as one of most talented drivers in the sport, his temperament often got in his own way.

In the days after his return to racing, Busch turned 30 and celebrated the birth of his son.

On Sunday night, however, Busch was called champion and those tens of thousands of fans who only a year ago regularly and lustily booed the 30-year-old from Las Vegas stood and cheered NASCAR’s new title holder in South Florida.

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. Not only is he the last driver to race at North Wilkesboro, he is the last driver to win there.

The title is the fourth NASCAR crown for Joe Gibbs, a three-time Super Bowl winning coach, but first since 2005. Jones was also the first driver in series history to win Rookie of the Year and a championship in the same season.