Kyle Busch wins NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship at Homestead: the motorsport

Kyle Busch completed his remarkable comeback season Sunday with a win in the Ford Ecoboost 400 to seal the Sprint Cup Championship at Homestead-Miami. He crashed into a concrete wall the day before the Daytona 500 and broke his right leg and left foot. At the Glen, fans who waited Gordon out at the garage gate were rewarded with autographs as they told him, “Thanks for all the years Jeff”.

“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. For those who have been close to Gordon as he rose from California-via-Indiana sprint vehicle dervish to template for modern drivers – NASCAR, IndyCar, the lot – this dash for a final title may have been no surprise. His manager speculates that Gordon might be a good fit for endurance races, and the driver himself has mentioned that he would be interested in participating in the famed 24 Hours of Le Mans race. Series championship. You know I don’t know it’s all completely sunk in yet I remember winning the X thirty series championship and it’s it took a little bit too to kind of get it in and I’m sure he’s feeling that here a few weeks in Las Vegas but. He finished the final round strong with three top five finishes.

Polesitter Denny Hamlin lost three laps in the garage having a transmission leak attended to early in the race, yet recovered to run as high as fifth before finishing 10th.

Gordon continues to struggle with the handling on his No. 24 Chevrolet and is running ninth with 80 laps to go.

“If he would have kept going with the things he was saying, it was going to get out of control there”, Gordon said. “And then the sun started going down, and (the track) really started changing and we lost a bunch of positions and just couldn’t gain them back”. If there is one takeaway from what Busch accomplished this season, it’s that this may be the beginning to the rest of his career.

“This is just so unbelievable, so fantastic and means so much and probably will for a long, long time to come”, Busch said.

Team owner Rick Hendrick plans to keep Gordon busy even with him out of the vehicle. His dedication to excellence and success helped form a fanbase like no other for Hendrick Motorsports and really got people involved in auto racing. In the end, he finished sixth in the race and third among the four championship contenders. After a green-flag cycle of pit stops around lap 215, Keselowski cycled back to the front and led until Busch got by for the top spot on a restart with seven laps remaining. His auto slowed while Busch’s sped up. Later today, he will battle for a fifth championship against last year’s title holder Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch and Martin Truex Jr.

“The dream of a lifetime, a dream come true”, Busch said.

The night belonged to Kyle Busch, a guy who began the season in a hospital after he was injured in an Xfinity Series crash. He’s got a attractive family, a reputation as one of the good guys and a popularity that transcends NASCAR.

Busch said that rehabbing from his injuries was “the hardest thing I have ever gone through”, and that taught him a lesson. It hasn’t sunk in yet; this night tonight is really, really special.

Now, the vocal support of those witnessing Busch winning a career-first championship may have had something to do with the No. 18 team throwing bags of M&M’s and T-shirts into the crowd – nevertheless, the cheers were still prominent. It was also fitting because Joe Gibbs Racing dominated a huge portion of this season and was the overwhelming favorite to win the title with one of its four drivers.

Busch also joins older brother, Kurt, as a NASCAR champion. For some perspective, Dale Earnhardt was 29 before he ran his first full NASCAR Cup season.

Gibbs formed his own race team in 1992, a year before he ended his first stint with the Washington Redskins. After passing Keselowski for the lead Busch pulled away and beat Harvick by 1.533 seconds to win the race and the championship, according to the Associated Press.

The title was the fourth for JGR and its first since Tony Stewart in 2005.