"Oh yeah baby! Wahoo! What! Wahoo! Icing on the cake, whoa! I love you guys, that’s why we won." --- Kyle Busch

Kyle Busch would also get some ice cream and a candle for that cake, as he picked the perfect way to win the 2009 Nationwide Series season. With the championship clinched when he took the green flag in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Busch would also go on to grab his ninth victory of the year, barely holding off Carl Edwards on the last lap.

Busch:
It was such a fun deal. Fun to watch and fun to be apart of at the end. Glad we were able to hold them off and come out here and win this thing. This is another race track that I can mark off my list of venues I haven’t won at. I’m really excited to be able to do that. I felt like I wasn’t the best driver here tonight but, the guys gave me a car capable enough of wining.

Now Edwards pitted under the final caution, took on four fresh tires, restarted eighth and made it a dramatic charge in the last 11 laps. But just as it has been all year long, Edwards didn’t quit have enough to beat Busch.

Carl Edwards:
I was closing at a rate that was going to take about three more laps to really get him. So there in the last corner I just drove her way down in there just to see what that looked like to see how close I could get. I couldn’t get by him without probably touching him so I didn’t have enough time but made a good charge.

Busch led 73 laps in the Ford 300, Edwards 53 and the man who came home third Jeff Burton was out front for 49 laps and at one point had the look of a winner.

Jeff Burton:
I’m really disappointed with finishing third and that’s a good thing to be. That’s good to be disappointed with third and that’s where our program has been in the past and that’s not where we’ve been lately and it’s good to be there again.

Joey Logano was forth across the stripe fifth was Denny Hamlin who made good on his promise to spin out Brad Keselowski. Which he did only 35 laps into the race.

Denny Hamlin:
I feel great right now, it was well worth it. The sun was bad at that point and I’ll use that as my catalyst or excuse but the fact is I wasn’t going to give him an inch and I thought after I went down pit road I’d won the race, I’ve never seen so many crews applaud and get the thumbs up on the way by. It just shows how many cars that he’s torn up in the past. The teams they feel a little redemption anyway.  

Keselowski who had already bounced off the wall himself downplayed Hamlin’s retaliation for their latest run in last week at Phoenix.

Brad Keselowski:
He just got me in a corner panel and I put together the spin-slash-save combination of my career … that was pretty cool. I was pretty proud of that at the time and that really didn’t hurt us that bad, we lost the track position.

But you could see it coming, couldn’t you?

Keselowski:
I don’t know if you could ever see something like that coming but it really didn’t make a difference, I had already killed my car and killed my chances of having a good run so it was my own fault.

And what did he think of Hamlin’s excuse that the sun got in his eyes?

Keselowski:

That sounds good, that’s good. I’ll remember that one, that’s good.

The six to 10 finishers at Homestead were David Reutimann, Ryan Newman, Steve Wallace, Scott Speed and Matt Kenseth. Kyle Busch wound up winning the Nationwide Series Championship by 210 points over Carl Edwards, with Brad Keselowski winding up third. Jason Leffler was fourth grabbing the fifth and final spot at the head table for the annual awards banquet was Mike Bliss. In the process of taking the title, Busch had 11 second place finishes to go along with the nine wins which added up to 25 top five and 30 top 10 finishes. Not to mention he lead 32 of 35 races for a record smashing 2,698 laps. The 24-year-old driver also set a new mark for points scored in a single season 5,682.

Busch:
Really it’s a great accomplishment to be able to set out and get this series most points in a season. I mean that just shows you the consistency we had, the amount of wins we had, the bonus points that we had with being able to lead the most races, the most laps in some of those races. When all things fall into place and work together, it just seems like sometimes nothing can go wrong.

It was a big year on the Nationwide Series for Joe Gibbs Racing as they made a total of 14 trips to victory lane, as Joey Logano also won five times. Now team president, J.D. Gibbs, normally a very thankful guy, found himself, however, uncharacteristically greedy in the closing laps at Homestead, admitting their newest champion, might be rubbing off on him.

J.D. Gibbs:

Man at the end of this race is kind of like you’re running, how do we lock the championship down. It’s like oh my gosh we have to win, we have to win or I’m not going to be happy. Thankfully I’m happy. I felt like Kyle.


A full set of the pictures taken at the Homestead-Miami Speedway can be viewed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationwide/sets/72157622736752711/