NASCAR: 2nd title provides vindication, cemented legacy for Kyle Busch

By Asher Fair | Nov 20, 2019

HOMESTEAD, FLORIDA - NOVEMBER 17: Kyle Busch, driver of the #18 M and M's Toyota (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images) /

Kyle Busch’s second career NASCAR Cup Series championship provided vindication and further cemented his legacy among the sport’s all-time greats.

Entering Sunday afternoon’s 2019 NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the Ford EcoBoost 400, three of the four Championship 4 drivers had won a race in the last three weeks.

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Martin Truex Jr. won the opening race of the three-race round of 8 at Martinsville Speedway before Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick won at Texas Motor Speedway and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin closed out the round by winning at ISM Raceway.

But Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch, who was making his fifth consecutive Championship 4 appearance, hadn’t won a race since early June when he won at Pocono Raceway. He was riding a 21-race win drought, his longest win drought since going a full year without a win between the 2016 and 2017 seasons.

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Additionally, he hadn’t finished ahead of Truex, Hamlin and Harvick in the same race in 10 consecutive races going back to the regular season’s penultimate race at Darlington Raceway. That’s exactly what he needed to do to win the championship.

He did it with a resounding victory in the 267-lap race around the four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) Homestead-Miami Speedway oval in Homestead, Florida. While each of the other three Championship 4 drivers experienced some sort of issue throughout the race, Busch held off Truex by 4.578 seconds to win the race and his second title after leading 120 laps, including 119 of the last 147.

Busch became the first two-time champion since seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson was crowned for the second time back in the 2007 season, and he became the first driver to win two titles in the Championship 4 format since it was implemented ahead of the 2014 season.

He won his first title in the 2015 season, when he missed the first 11 races of the season due to injuries he suffered in a wreck in the Xfinity Series season opener at Daytona International Speedway. NASCAR granted him a playoff waiver, and he took advantage of it, winning four of the remaining 15 regular season races and finishing in the top 30 in the regular season point standings to officially become playoff eligible.

He qualified for the Championship 4 and entered the season finale on a 15-race win drought with four victories. He exited as NASCAR’s newest champion with a title-sealing fifth victory to end his lengthy win drought, much like he did in 2019.

But the fact that he won it the way he did, competing in only 25 of the season’s 36 races and not finishing the season in the top 20 in the championship standings, caused critics to write him off as a “fake champion”, even though, in a way, doing it the way he did was more impressive.

Busch admitted that he heard these doubts and that they not only got to him but increased his desire to prove them wrong by winning another title.

That’s just what he did, becoming just the 16th driver in Cup Series history to win two championships — and that’s whether you consider the modern-day Championship 4 titles “legitimate championships” or you live by the phrase “Back in my day, we won championships, not Chases”.

Using the official format, Busch is the 2015 and 2019 champion. Excluding playoffs from the equation, he obviously would not have won the title in 2015. But he would have been the 2018 champion, and in 2019, it didn’t matter; he won both ways.

He’s a two-time champion. Period.

There’s really nothing left to doubt about him.

And he’s still only 34 years old.

Additionally, he sealed his second championship with what was his 56th career victory as well, breaking the tie with Rusty Wallace for ninth place on the all-time wins list. Next up? Seven-time champion Dale Earnhardt at 76 wins.

That’s pretty good for a guy who has also been doubted for supposedly only being able to win Truck Series and Xfinity Series races.

I’ve always believed that when you win something once, whether that’s Super Bowl, a World Series or a NASCAR championship, there’s a sense of appreciation you gain for just how tough it is.

But when you win something twice, especially several years after winning it the first time, that sense is strengthened to an extent that you can’t possible foresee; you’ve done it once, seen firsthand what the challenges are, seen yourself fall to those challenges, and then you’ve done it again even knowing just how tough it is to defeat what you’re up against and to overcome the obstacles that make up the adversity you face.

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For Kyle Busch, this was more than winning a second NASCAR Cup Series championship. This was vindication, and it was a cementation of a legacy that has already easily placed him in the discussion among the top 10 drivers in series history, a legacy that should only continue to grow as he continues winning races and championships in the coming years.

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