Five Quick Takeaways From Kyle Busch’s Second NASCAR Cup Championship

Kyle Busch won his second NASCAR Cup championship Sunday by rolling to a convincing (and somewhat anticlimactic) victory over Martin Truex Jr. in a 400-mile race at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida. It was the first Cup race victory since June 2 for the 34-year-old Busch, who was the only driver to advance to the four-driver final on points, not victories. Busch drove one of three Toyotas owned by the former Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs in the championship race; Truex and Denny Hamlin were the others. Kevin Harvick, the only Ford driver in the finals, struggled with handling for most of the race.

Ideally, for entertainment purposes, all four championship drivers would have been bumper-to-bumper entering the final laps of the race, setting up a thrilling shootout. But Busch really won the race with a shrewdly timed pit stop with 56 laps to go in the 267-lap event. Truex waited five laps to make his final pit stop, enabling Busch to extend his lead on fresher tires. Hamlin, who has never won a Cup championship, fell out of contention after his car overheated following a poor adjustment on his final pit stop, steam spouting out of the right side of his car like Old Faithful. Without the benefit of another caution flag, Truex was just too far behind to catch Busch. It was a disappointing day for the crew on the NBC telecast – with the excitable Rick Allen and helium-guzzling analyst Jeff Burton all but marking off the final laps. Busch provided a sweet post-race moment by taking his 4-year-old son, Brexton, on his victory lap.

Busch, a flamboyant native of Las Vegas who has really embraced his role as a rowdy villain in what remains of the stock-car soap opera, was somewhat subdued after getting out of his car, saying, “There’s always your doubters, there’s always your haters, but this one’s for Rowdy Nation. You’re the best.” Busch wanted to win this championship because he felt as if his first Cup title, in 2015, came with an asterisk: He was badly injured in an Xfinity Series race before the Daytona 500 and missed the first 11 Cup races over the next four months. He was granted a medical waiver by NASCAR and was allowed to compete for the championship, winning a berth in the postseason on the next-to-last race of the regular season. 

The final stage of the race started — ta da! — with the “Championship Four” occupying the top four positions in the field. Truex’s crew had made what seemed to be a colossal mistake by switching tires on a pit stop, and left-side tires are not meant to work on the right side (and vice versa). Truex had to return to have his tires switched, but fell to only 13th place, and, more important, at the front of the group of drivers a lap down. When John Hunter Nemechek spun out, leading to a caution, Truex received a free pass back to the lead lap, per the rules. This used to be widely known, derisively, as the “Lucky Dog,” and Truex was lucky, but so was NBC. Truex had plenty of time to move to the front, anyway, but he was not out of contention for long.

The stands at Homestead-Miami Speedway appeared to be about two-thirds full. That translates to a crowd of roughly 35,000, including those fans in the suites. ISM Raceway in Phoenix will play host to the 2020 finale, with Homestead assigned a Cup race at the end of spring break — just what youngsters want to do on a Sunday in South Florida instead of going to the beach. NBC seemed to shy away from overhead shots that showed bird’s-eye views of the stands, because it did not look great on TV. There were 148 tickets available at StubHub under $35 at noon ET Sunday, and a handful of tickets available an hour before the race for as little as $20. It was kind of a blah way to end what was not a very exciting season. At least Monster Energy is gone.