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Ford 300 - Homestead-Miami Speedway
Biffle Wins the Race, Busch Wins the Chase
It was a Roush Racing kind of day, with Greg Biffle taking the race and teammate Kurt Busch taking the Chase. Biffle used a late pass around Tony Stewart on a green-white-checkered restart to win the Ford 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Despite having the day’s strongest car, leading the event four times for a total of 117 laps, Biffle needed to go into overtime to claim the victory in the season finale. The race would be forced into the green-white-checkered finish when leader Ryan Newman blew a right front tire in turn two on lap 266, handing the lead over to Stewart. Biffle then made the pass for the lead and held off Jimmie Johnson by .342 seconds to capture his second win of the 2004 season and the third of his career. It was Biffle’s first trip to victory lane at Homestead but second in the state of Florida, he won at Daytona in July of 2003. Jimmie Johnson finished in the second position, while teammate Jeff Gordon came home in third. Stewart ended up in the fourth position after leading on the final restart. On the championship front, Kurt Busch won the inaugural Nextel Cup championship with a fifth-place effort on Sunday. Busch finished eight points ahead of Johnson in second and 16 points ahead of Gordon in third. Busch claimed the lead atop the Nextel Cup point standings following a penalty to Dale Earnhardt Jr. after Talladega and held off all contenders the rest of the way. Busch was the only driver to score a top-ten finish in nine of the ten races in the Chase for the Championship, no other driver scored more than seven top tens. Busch became the 27th driver to win a NASCAR Cup series championship and became the sixth different champion in the last six seasons. The championship is the first for Busch, as well as the first for crew chief Jimmy Fennig, and is the second consecutive for car-owner Jack Roush.
Chase-Leader Busch Grabs Season-Ending Pole in Miami
Points-leader Kurt Busch’s first pole position of the season couldn’t have happened at a better time. Busch, who leads the Chase for the Nextel Cup standings by 18 points, won the Bud Pole for the Ford 400 at the Homestead-Miami Speedway on Friday afternoon, qualifying in 30.114 seconds, at an average speed of 179.319 mph. The lap was short of the track record set last season by Jamie McMurray, the first year on the high-banked configuration. This is Busch’s second straight start from the top spot, although last week’s field was set by points after rain canceled qualifying at Darlington. This is Busch’s first pole since he won the pole position at Homestead in 2002, an event in which he went on to win, and the third pole of his career. Greg Biffle had the second-fastest time with a qualifying lap of 30.116 seconds, at an average speed of 179.307 mph, and will join Busch on the all-Roush Racing front row. Ryan Newman qualified in the third position, followed by Kasey Kahne and Jeff Gordon in the top five.
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