Wheels of fortune

Monday, Nov. 22, 2004 | 9:46 a.m.

HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- During driver introductions for the NASCAR Nextel Cup championship race Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Kurt Busch was greeted with a chorus of boos usually reserved for another Yankee driver, Jeff Gordon.

Four hours and 406.5 miles later, Busch had something else in common with Gordon: He's a NASCAR Nextel Cup champion.

Busch, a 26-year-old Las Vegas native who began racing only 10 years ago at Pahrump Valley Speedway, overcame a broken wheel and a botched pit stop midway through the race and rallied for a fifth-place finish that clinched the inaugural Nextel Cup championship by the closest margin in series history.

Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon, Busch's closest pursuers going into the finale of the 10-race "Chase for the NASCAR Nextel Cup," finished second and third behind race winner Greg Biffle, but Busch's fifth-place showing left him 8 points ahead of Johnson and 16 points ahead of four-time champion Gordon.

"It's just an unbelievable day to be able to persevere such as we did again, to over all the different obstacles (and) put together such a great season such as we did," an emotional Busch said. "So many emotions today and to be able to pull through and finish like we did -- to cap off a great season -- it's an unbelievable feeling."

As the race unfolded, it appeared as if the championship battle was playing into Busch's hands. In seven of the nine previous Chase races, Busch and his No. 97 Roush Racing team was able to turn similar adversity into a top-five or top-10 finish. As a result, Busch held the points lead for the final eight weeks of the season.

Busch's day nearly ended on lap 93 when he pulled his Ford Taurus onto pit access road with what he thought was a flat tire. As he approached the entrance to pit road, the right front wheel broke and came off, nearly sending Busch into the tire barrier protecting the outside pit wall. Busch was able to take on a new wheel and tire without losing a lap, but he fell from second to 28th place.

"To have that feeling of knowing that the light at the end of the tunnel was very dim at that point and then to almost run into the tire barrier thinking about the light being too dim, I realized I was in the wrong frame of mind," Busch said. "The car wouldn't turn. I just had too much speed and when I applied the brake the car turned to the right even further.

"Because of the way that the (brake) caliper locked up so quickly, it turned the car to the right. I let go of the brake and turned the thing as hard as I could left and I missed it and in doing all that, I came into pit road too hot. So my speed on entry was too fast and that penalty was to start at the tail-end of the longest line and that was that."

Not quite. Twenty laps later, Busch again lost valuable track position when his crew chief, Jimmy Fennig, called off a four-tire pit stop in favor of a two-tire stop but failed to adequately relay that information to the crew. As a result, Busch spent an inordinate amount of time on pit road and slipped into the second half of the field.

"One little slip here or there, we were able to make up for it," Busch said, referring to the 10-race playoff. "We started off the Chase with a win and we finished with a top five and a pole. It's just unbelievable the way that Jimmy Fennig executed the whole program to give me the best racecars that I could possibly drive and to give me equipment that would give me the position like we had today."

Although Busch appeared to have the championship safely in hand with two laps remaining, he was forced to endure a green-white-checkered finish when the last of 14 caution flags was displayed, extending the race by four laps.

"I was just sick to my stomach the last few laps," Busch said. "I had been out there forever. I hadn't had fresh water in a while. This is in parallel to the Super Bowl or to the World Series to snag this first championship that NASCAR put together with this new format and to be the first Nextel Cup champion, it took so much from within.

"It's like any other championship in the world; I felt like I had the whole world on my shoulders every lap today."

Busch, the fourth-youngest driver to win a championship in NASCAR's premier series, reached the pinnacle of his sport in only his fourth full season in the Cup series. He credited his maturing process over the past year for helping him overcome the adversity he and his teams face during the course of the 10-race Chase.

"I've seen things go wrong and tried to understand the best that I can and what I need to do as a driver to communicate to the team to be able to persevere and stay focused on the task at hand," Busch said. "Things are always magnified when you're in this position of driving for a championship.

"It was a full team effort the way that we were able to overcome all of those circumstances. I'm overwhelmed. I'm completely exhausted about what these final 10 races meant but it's a true testament to what a team has to do, to what a driver has to do, to what an owner sees as a leader and the way that you have to compete at your top level for 10 races against the 10 toughest competitors -- that's what this season meant for us."

Although the grueling nine-month season effectively ended with the waving of the checkered flag Sunday afternoon, Busch will begin a whirlwind media tour next week in New York in advance of the Dec. 3 NASCAR awards banquet. Among the activities planned for Busch are appearances on the Today show, Live with Regis and Kelly and the Late Show with David Letterman.

In representing NASCAR for the next 12 months, Busch said his goal is to generate more interest in NASCAR -- as well as trying to win over some of those fans that boo him on a weekly basis.

"That's what's great about our sport: The fans are entitled to root and to pull against anybody they want to, and to be in a situation such as mine, the underdog, ... to be able to come up to the top, maybe too quickly through my career as well ... and to race too hard too early, wrinkle those fenders and to crumble the spirits of some of those fans, this is definitely a bullet point in my career that will help some of them realize that I'm not such a bad guy, I guess.

"I hope that it's more of a positive outcome because I need to do my job as a champion to lead Nextel into their second year (as the series sponsor)."

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