Busch capitalizes on Truex’s pit road miscue to win final NASCAR Cup Series at Homestead
Martin Truex Jr. seemed destined early on to run away with the Ford EcoBoost 400.
But a mistake on pit road deep into Stage 2 cost Truex everything.
And it gave Kyle Busch the opening he needed to run away from with the competition on Sunday, win the 267-lap race at Homestead-Miami Speedway and claim his second NASCAR Cup Series title.
Busch, driving the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota Camry, paced the field for majority of the third and final stage of the race and had a distant lead for the final 45 laps. He edged out Truex by about four-and-a-half seconds for the win. No one else was within 10 seconds of Busch.
“I know it kind of dulled out towards the end,” Busch said from Victory Lane. “It was exciting enough from my seat. It was a lot of fun to cap off such an amazing year.”
It ended with a final celebration, a champagne shower with his crew and family, and a victory lap around the track he just won with his 4-year-old son Brexton riding shotgun.
Kevin Harvick, the lone Ford driver in the Championship 4 and the only one not part of Joe Gibbs Racing, finished fourth in the race and third in the Cup Series standings after a long pit stop on Lap 224 put him too far behind to rally back.
Denny Hamlin, looking for his first Cup Series title, fell out of contention with about 50 laps to go when his No. 11 Toyota Supra began overheating. He finished 10th in the race — a staggering 30.52 seconds behind Busch — and fourth in the Cup standings.
Busch, 34, becomes the 16th driver to win multiple NASCAR Cup Series titles and the first to win the series twice since the sport changed its postseason in 2014 to a multiple stage elimination format. Busch, the only driver to make the Championship 4 in each of the last five years, won the Cup in 2015. He finished third in 2016, runner-up in 2017 and fourth in 2018.
It marked Busch’s fifth win of the season and his 56th overall competing in the Cup Series, breaking a tie with Rusty Wallace for the ninth-most all-time.
The win, however, came on the heels of a severe miscue by Truex’s pit crew.
Truex left pit road after 120 laps as the surefire favorite in the race.
Seconds after making his way back onto the mile-and-a-half track, Truex felt something wrong with his car.
Crew chief Cole Pearn’s message: The pit crew put his tires on the wrong side of the car. He needs to come back to pit road.
Truex had led 98 laps at that point. Now, he was a full lap behind and his race was on life support.
He received a stroke of luck about 15 laps later. A caution following John Hunter Nemechek’s spin out on Lap 136 gave Truex the free pass that pushed him back into the lead lap — albeit in Position 13 and with a long way to go to get back into contention.
“That was dramatic,” crew chief Pearn told Truex after the caution. “I don’t know how the hell we did that.”
When the race restarted on Lap 142, Busch and Harvick were neck-in-neck in first and second.
Truex, meanwhile, went to work and did his best to make it interesting.
He was up to 11th after Lap 143.
Tenth after Lap 145.
Seventh after Lap 150.
Sixth after Lap 152.
Fifth after Lap 154, passing Hamlin in the process.
And fourth after Lap 155, the spot he held through the end of Stage 2.
Truex moved up to third following the caution pit stops between Stage 2 and 3.
But he came up just short.
Before the pit stop fiasco, Truex utterly dominated the field.
He took over the lead from Harvick at Lap 21 and, outside of when he took a pit stop in Lap 39, led the rest of the way in the 80-lap Stage 1. Kyle Larson, the closest driver at the end of the stage, trailed Truex by six seconds. Busch, the closest Championship 4 contender, was 9.5 seconds behind in third place. Only 13 of 40 drivers remained on the lead lap at the end of the stage. Harvick and Hamlin were in fourth and fifth after the first stage.
Truex kept that lead through Lap 120 when he went to pit road where it all fell apart.
“Unfortunate,” Truex said, “but that’s the way it goes.”
Busch capitalized. His competition faded.
Another trip to Victory Lane followed.
“Everybody always says you never give up. We’re no different. We just do what we can do each and every week,” Busch said. “Sometimes we may not be the best, sometimes we may not have the right track position. We had a really good car and I could race around and move around. That’s what’s so special about Homestead Miami Speedway, is the ability to put on a show.”
This story was originally published November 17, 2019 at 6:21 PM.
.JPG)