Kyle Busch wins
His comeback from injury finishes with first Sprint Cup title
at Homestead to close out NASCAR season and earn his 1st Cup title.
HOMESTEAD — Kyle Busch began the 2015 NASCAR season in a Florida hospital bed with a mangled leg and broken foot.
He finished it in Victory Lane in Florida as the last man standing.
The 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup champion celebrated with a swig of Monster Energy, a handful of M&Ms, a slice of pizza and a big ol’ trophy that defines his improbable comeback.
“Pretty unbelievable, I guess,” Busch said. “It’s a dream of a lifetime, a dream come true. I can’t
believe it with everything that happened this year. It’s awesome, awesome, awesome.”
Busch completed an improbable and often painful comeback Sunday night at Homestead-Miami Speedway, outgunning the three other Championship 4 contenders to win his first NASCAR Cup title. He won the Ford Eco-Boost 400 race as well, making sure there were no asterisks on his championship run.
He easily maintained a gap between his Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota and defending champion Kevin Harvick’s Chevy after a restart with eight laps to go. Harvick, who finished second in the race and in the Cup standings, never seriously challenged after the final restart.
“You always want to win, but I’ve learned not to get greedy,”
Harvick said. “After last year, I felt like we had everything go our way, and tonight it didn’t go our way. But just congratulations to the No. 18 team and everything they did.”
Nobody figured that Busch would be getting any congratulatory attaboys this past February when he slammed into an unprotected inside wall at Daytona International Speedway during the Xfinity Series opener, suffering a double compound fracture in his right leg and a fracture of his left foot.
As the 2015 Cup season began a day later, Busch set up a bar set atop his hospital bed at Halifax Health Medical Center to do pull-ups to gather strength so he could return to racing at some point.
Although he missed 11 races, Busch was granted a waiver from NASCAR, making him eligible as long as he won a race and finished the regular season within the top 30 in points. He did a tad better than that, winning four races — starting in June at Sonoma Raceway — before moving on and advancing to each round in the Chase elimination series.
“I’ll say it again,” said Busch, 30. “The rehab of getting back, getting ready and focused — all that was the hardest part and the hardest thing I have ever gone through.”
Busch’s victory zapped the title hopes of the favorite, Harvick, and the sentimental story line involving retiring NASCAR icon Jeff Gordon, who finished sixth, and Martin Truex Jr., the fourth Championship 4 qualifier in the postseason elimination format.
Truex Jr. was once cast aside as an afterthought, finishing 24th in points last season before his resurgence as a one-man band for Furniture Row Racing. He led exactly one lap last season. He finished 12th on Sunday.
But all sentimental roads led to Gordon, who was making his final run on the NASCAR circuit. The entire nation seemed to be cheering for him to hit a walk-off home run celebrating his fifth Cup title.
It was nothing but a usual day, although he did stick to his routine of getting a massage. Everything else was sentimental and surreal.
Racing icon Mario Andretti asked to take a photo with him. So did Formula One Champ Lewis Hamilton, who also walked toward Gordon’s pit stall at the end of the track (a ceremonial thing for the Championship 4) and peeked in the car while Gordon’s daughter Ella explained all the dohickeys in a stock car.
Gordon was able to keep his emotions in check all day, except for the morning when his mom showed up at his motorhome. He thanked her over and over again for all the sacrifices through the years.
“Boo-hooing as loud as a person could boo-hoo,” Gordon said. “It didn’t take the championship for me to come out there feeling like I’m on top of the world.”