That race has been etched into the annals of NASCAR history. Stewart was given virtually no shot at winning his third title, but the Chase turned out to be the catalyst. Stewart won his third championship on the basis of most victories.
In the final 10 races of the season, Stewart won fully half of them, including three of the final four, to earn the title. Those five were the only races Stewart won all season. Edwards had won just once, early in the season at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and the winner-take-all aspect of the NASCAR playoffs had not yet been introduced.
All seven of Johnson’s titles ended on the champion’s stage at Homestead-Miami Speedway, including five straight from 2006-’10, plus the ’13 and ’16 championships. That title run matched the nearly unassailable record set first by Richard Petty and then Dale Earnhardt, as those three are the only drivers to win seven titles in NASCAR Cup Series history.
It will be exceedingly strange next season to make travel plans to Phoenix for the season finale because the Homestead-Miami market embraced the showdown nature of the NASCAR races almost from the beginning of the playoff era in 2004.
It started with a bang, too.
In 2004, a brash, young driver named Kurt Busch entered the season finale with an 18-point lead in the standings, though it wasn’t a lead-pipe cinch that he would take the crown. Five drivers, including Busch, were in the running for the first championship of the NEXTEL era, and all were around at the finish.
Busch nearly wasn’t. On lap 93, his Ford lost a tire while entering pit road. Faced with the loss of half his front rubber, Busch barely missed the end of the pit wall before getting to the attention of his pit crew. The team changed the tires and got their driver back in the fight.
Throughout the remainder of the race, Busch kept charging forward. A late-race caution flag set up a green-white-checkered finish and Busch, who was driving for Roush Fenway Racing, held on to win the championship with a fifth-place finish.
Johnson finished second by a scant eight points after ending up second to Greg Biffle, whose victory was the first of three straight for the Washington driver at Homestead.
That eight-point margin of victory for Busch stood all of seven seasons as the closest championship margin in NASCAR history until Stewart retired that record for all time with his 2011 title.
It will be exceedingly strange to end the season in the desert rather than on the doorstep of the Everglades.
Who will win the title this year, in the final act of an 18-year run on a big stage?
Since it is a winner-take-all event and the Championship 4 won’t be settled until the penultimate race of the season at ISM Raceway, previous excellence on the quirky oval, where ripping the boards is the way to win races, will have to suffice for some sort of a prediction.
Among the playoff drivers as of this writing, Kevin Harvick is the leader in the clubhouse with an average finish of 6.6 and totals of one victory, 10 top-five and 16 top-10 finishes on the Homestead oval. Only Denny Hamlin (two) has more victories at the track among the playoff drivers, but he has six fewer top-five finishes and seven less top-10 efforts than Harvick, does, and Hamlin’s average finish is 10.3.
Martin Truex Jr. opened the playoffs with two straight victories and has five top-five and nine top-10 finishes at Homestead, but his average finish in Souh Florida is 10.8, some 2.2 behind Harvick’s. However, Truex did earn the 2017 title with a Homestead triumph.
The driver with the second-best average finish at Homestead is Chase Elliott, at 7.7, so he has to be considered should he make it to the Championship 4.
Among the others, only Kyle Busch, Kurt Busch and Logano have won there, with both Kyle Busch and Logano earning titles in the winner-take-all era.
Kyle Larson, a big fan of the high line that is the fast way around at Homestead, cannot be counted out should he too make it into the final round. Larson, the dirt-track star from California, has led 325 laps there.
You never know who will be hot and who will be not by the time Ford Championship Weekend arrives. The competition this season will likely be even more robust than usual, even at a track that has produced such memorable moments in NASCAR history.
No matter which drivers comprise the Championship 4 that night, the 267-lap race on Ralph Sanchez’s Everglades oval will carry a special flare. Who doesn’t want to cap off an era in the sport that began with teething problems on a new speedway but has grown into one of the finest venues to host a title-deciding race in any series anywhere in the world?
The tenure of Homestead-Miami Speedway as the place where NASCAR championships are decided is at an end. Will it be a show for the ages? Chances are better than good that it will be.