NASCAR: Kyle Busch’s Championship Run Was One For The Sports World

No questions about it: Everyone loves a comeback story. It doesn’t matter what sport or athletic test it may be; when an athlete comes back from overwhelming odds, it’s guaranteed to put a pep in everyone’s step. Football player returns from serious injury to win the Super Bowl? The world melts. Baseball player returns from drug rehab to lead his team to the world series? There isn’t a dry eye in the house.

Where does Kyle Busch’s championship run stand?

More from Kyle Busch

• NASCAR: Darrell Wallace Jr. calls Kyle Busch’s comments stupid
• NASCAR responds to Kyle Busch’s marketing campaign remarks
• NASCAR: Does Kyle Busch have a point, or is he just complaining?
• NASCAR: Ryan Blaney rips Kyle Busch for his recent remarks
• NASCAR: Kyle Busch not thrilled with young driver marketing campaigns

A large amount of NASCAR fans are purists. They don’t believe a driver can win a race or a championship unless they’ve cleared any other number of hurdles, such as a full season or multiple starts. A lot tend to neglect the idea that these are the best in the world, and they all face that same chance of winning when the green flag waves.

Of course, Busch isn’t like everyone else. At Daytona in February, Busch destroyed his No. 54 in an Xfinity Series accident, breaking his leg and his foot. As a result, Busch stayed out of the car for 11 weeks, getting well and working harder than ever. But being away from the car has been shown to have two effects on drivers: Either they can come back with a chip on their shoulder, hell-bent on turning the racing world on it’s lid, or they can fade into obscurity.

This is a Busch brother here. They don’t settle for “fading away.”

Instead, he rehabbed just as hard as any pro ball player, ultimately making a return to competition in May, instead of the originally slated July. Five races later he won at Sonoma, a track that surely took a toll on Busch’s legs and feet.

That led to a steady, strong string of runs that led to three more wins in the next four weeks. This, coupled with sheer consistency, moved Busch into the top-30 in points, well into Chase contention. All this while, Busch exhibited an unheard of level of maturity, especially for a Busch brother. As a matter of fact, that was Busch all season long once he returned: Mature.

That maturity led him to several consistent finishes, where he managed to hang on to his Chase spot. Once Homestead struck, he won. Therefore, the driver and crew of the No. 18 became the 2015 Sprint Cup champions, and if there was ever a team that deserved such a fortune, it was that of Busch’s.

Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports

However, according to the purists, Busch’s championship will always have an asterisk beside it. That’s a load of nonsense that should never be entertained. He worked hard to overcome the odds, and what’s not to say he wouldn’t have won the title if he wasn’t injured? They way he ran in 2015, it makes a lot of sense to think that he would have been even more dominant.

Ultimately, Busch deserved this and everything that came with it. Why should his season be wrecked because Daytona didn’t put down safer barriers in areas that needed it most? It wasn’t his fault his leg broke.

Rather, it’s asinine to think that there are Facebook groups actually popping up now, call for NASCAR to be boycotted because “champions don’t miss 11 races,” or something of that ilk. Those “fans” fail to realize that this was in fact a man who worked as hard as any athlete out there to rehab and return to the track. Busch’s strong arming of the competition goes to show that he is without a doubt one of the most driven individuals behind the wheel, and his title win was the result of hard work, misery, sweat, and a steel resolve to not only return to competition but to return to the top of the competition.

Busch was 2015’s “Comeback Kid” across the sports world. He overcame serious odds, taking a severe injury and turning it into championship fuel. That’s an age old story, one sports fans have frothed at the mouth at over the years. This time, it was NASCAR that got to provide the background to the story.

Next: Final NASCAR Power Rankings

This was the rise of a new, mature Kyle Busch. If 2015 was any indication, this Busch is undoubtedly here to stay.