Kyle Busch wants 2nd title to validate 2015 championship
HOMESTEAD, FLA. — Kyle Busch came to Homestead-Miami Speedway to win a championship. If he comes up short, don’t expect him to fake a smile and pretend he is pleased.
Busch is driven to collect trophies — he has 183 pieces of hardware across NASCAR’s three national series — and after 15 years, he still struggles with losing.
“There’s times when second is good enough, and there’s times when second will be good enough this weekend as long as one of the other three isn’t in front of me,” Busch said.
Busch will race Sunday against Martin Truex Jr., Brad Keselowski and Kevin Harvick for the championship at Homestead. The highest finishing driver of the four will claim the title, and this format has shown that it typically takes a race victory to claim the Cup.
Harvick won the race in 2014 to win the title and Busch won the race in his 2015 championship season. Jimmie Johnson won his record-tying seventh title with a Homestead victory last season.
There’s no doubt Busch will be chasing the checkered flag on Sunday and a second Cup title. He had a shot last year to repeat as champion but wound up third in the final standings.
He’s not given up in his relentless pursuit of winning another championship for himself, in part because of the way he won in 2015.
Busch was seriously injured in the seasonopening Xfinity Series race that year, and despite missing a third of the season, he was granted a waiver to compete in the championship as long as he qualified for the playoffs.
Busch returned to his car and put together a streak of four wins in five races to earn his spot. He capped his abbreviated season with a Homestead win and the title.
“I think a second championship validates the first one,” Busch said. “There’s a lot of arguments being made that we didn’t deserve the first one, we should never have been there for the first one. But the fact of the mat- ter is we executed and did our job with the rules that were given to us, and we achieved. This would just kind of put ourselves in another elite group of guys and drivers and teams that have been really, really good over the years that have been able to go win championships.”