The 2015 Sprint Cup season began with Kyle Busch in a Florida hospital and it ends with the Joe Gibbs Racing driver being crowned NASCAR’s sixty-seventh champion Sunday night after he drove to victory in the season-ending Ford EcoBoost 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Busch mastered the final restart and then pulled away from Kevin Harvick in the closing laps to claim his first Cup Series crown.

He broke his lower right leg and left foot in an accident in the X-FINITY Series season opener at Daytona in February and missed eleven races while recovering from those injuries. Busch returned with a championship resolve that produced a three-race winning streak at mid-year, paving the way for him to earn a post-season berth as the Number-2 seed behind Jimmie Johnson. Busch controlled The Championship Four much of the way in Sunday’s race, leaving the three other title contenders in his wake.

Harvick finished second, one-point- five seconds behind at the checkered flag. Jeff Gordon came home sixth in the final race of his storied careerwith Martin Truex Junior twelfth … Brad Keselowski was the highest-finishing non-title contender in Sunday’s race, taking third place, with Joey Logano and Kyle Larson completing the top five.