RELATED: Full race results | Final standings
HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Kyle Busch's dream of becoming a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion became reality last year. This season, the difficulty of repeating at the sport's highest level hit home.
After a late succession of restarts and a shuffle of pit strategies, Busch wound up sixth in Sunday's season-ending Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, five positions behind newly crowned seven-time champ Jimmie Johnson. It was the culmination of an eventful 268 laps that required a rally from an unscheduled mid-race pit stop and an 11th-hour visit to pit road in a last-ditch effort to gain ground.
"You just keep going through what's going on and make the most of your opportunities," Busch said post-race. "We did that. We did that all year long. We did the right things sometimes and here tonight we felt like we were kind of behind the eight ball a few times, and then it looked like it would be ours to lose and somehow we just weren't able to execute there and do a good enough job at the end."
Busch led just one of the 268 laps, but spent much of the early stages among the top five. A tire issue forced him to pit road on the 137th circuit, knocking him one lap down and to 21st in the running order. The unscheduled stop left him out of the front-runners' pit sequence, but he was able regain his lead-lap standing when a fortuitous third caution flag flew 34 laps later.
Busch remained in contention until a rash of late yellows scrambled the order. Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Carl Edwards crashed out of contention 11 laps from the end, and the rapid-fire restarts that followed presented an opportunity for Busch's crew chief, Adam Stevens, to shake up the strategy.
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After restarting third in the inside lane with little benefit, Busch's No. 18 Toyota pitted out of fifth place ahead of the deciding overtime restart, placing him 13th but with fresher tires for the final shootout.
"Once we restarted third on the bottom and didn't get a good restart and lost that ground, we were going to be sixth or fifth, three rows back, and we weren't going to be able to do anything from there," Stevens explained. "We knew we were going to give up some track position, but we weren't going to make up any ground from where we were at."
Busch bypassed seven cars in the final two laps, but a repeat of his title-clinching victory on the 1.5-mile track was not in the offing. The team's consolation was wrapping a productive four-win season with a playoff run built on remarkable consistency.
"It's been kind of an odd race, a kind of a microcosm of our odd season, I guess," Stevens said. "I'm proud of the effort, proud of Kyle and just didn't have the best car tonight, but still found ourselves with a chance and then all hell broke loose. So yeah, you'll have that."