MORE: Truex wins title | Miami race results | Final standings
BUY NOW: VIP Tickets
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Kyle Busch managed his best sheepish grin Sunday evening when asked to assess his season for the television cameras. His No. 18 Toyota had fallen just short in his pursuit of a second Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship, finishing .681 seconds behind race and title winner Martin Truex Jr.
Taking solace in his season-long performance might come later. Minutes after exiting his Joe Gibbs Racing machine, not so much.
“I guess,” Busch shrugged.
Busch’s runner-up finish in Sunday’s Ford EcoBoost 400 was a heart-wrenching end to his third straight appearance among the Championship 4 in the NASCAR Playoffs. He placed third among the final four last year, one season after his lone premier series title in 2015.
Busch led 43 of the 267 laps, but was unable to close within a bumper’s reach of Truex in the 34-lap green-flag run that closed the season finale. But the race hinged on a late caution period — for his brother Kurt’s spin on Lap 228 — that foiled crew chief Adam Stevens’ alternate pit-stop strategy.
RELATED: See the scenes from Miami | Recap every 2017 race winner
When Truex and other title contenders Kevin Harvick and Brad Keselowski all pitted on Laps 198-199, Busch stayed on the track in an attempt to complete the race’s final stage with just one pit stop, which he made on Lap 215.
Had the race continued under green conditions the rest of the way, Stevens said “we were going to win by a large margin,” and that the other title hopefuls would have needed an extra stop. That solid strategy never got the chance to bear fruit after the yellow flag unfurled on Lap 229.
“That’s what happens when you lose in this format, but we gave it everything we had,” Busch said. “We gave it our all. So congratulations to the 78. They deserved it probably on every other race, but today, I thought we were better. Doesn’t matter, though. They were out front when it mattered most.
“Just unfortunate that that caution came out and kind of ruined our race strategy and we weren’t able to get back to where we needed to be, and then I had to fight too hard with some of those other guys trying to get back up through there. That’s racing.”
The prime offender among “those other guys,” he said, was Joey Logano, a driver outside the postseason field who lined up fourth for the final restart but inched ahead and kept Busch at bay for 10 laps. It took Busch another eight laps to dispatch Harvick for second place, but by then only 17 laps remained and his forward progress was hampered.
Logano chalked their contest up to “that’s just racing,” as he left his Team Penske No. 22 hauler for the night, but Busch hinted that more played into their battle for position.
“The 22 was just air-blocking,” Busch said of Logano’s late-race tactics to disturb his aerodynamics. “He was racing me really, really hard. He and I aren’t friends, so that’s what you’d expect from the guys in that situation. He’s just got to remember the back side of that what happens.”
Finding consolation in finishing second — both in the race and the season-long standings — wasn’t a popular emotion in the No. 18 camp post-race, even against the backdrop of a sterling surge to five wins in the second half of the season.
“The season as a whole is just immensely frustrating,” Stevens said. “We had great speed all year. We could’ve won another half-dozen races easy and we didn’t. I’d put this one in that category, too. We had the car to do it, the stops to do it and cautions didn’t fall our way.”