Dade Man’s Curves

Kurt Busch has the lead, Jimmie Johnson has the momentum and Jeff Gordon has the experience.

One of that threesome will probably become NASCAR’s first Nextel Cup champion today following the running of the Ford 400, the final event of a two-part, 36-race stock car series. After nine races in the 10-race Chase for the Championship, Busch leads Johnson by 18 points and Gordon by 21.

Fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. and old-timer Mark Martin trail Busch by 72 and 82, respectively. They’re still in the hunt, but just barely.

For those who root for one make or another, even though a common template has made all of the cars virtually identical, it narrows down to the Fords of Busch and Martin against the Chevrolets of Johnson, Gordon and Junior.

Their battle will be waged on moderately-banked Homestead-Miami Speedway, a 1.5-mile paved oval in south Dade County, about 25 miles south of Miami. It has been on the Cup schedule for only six years and has closed the season the last two years.

Homestead itself, a bedroom community of 36,000 today, was blown off the map in 1992 by Hurricane Andrew, and but for one man’s vision it might still be off Florida maps.

It is common practice for housing developers to first build a golf course in order to attract attention to their project.

Instead of a golf course, Cuban refuge Ralph Sanchez built a racetrack. It was his desire to show that the area around the communities of South Florida, such as Homestead and Florida City, and the path to the Keys still had a pulse.

What had been an Air Force base, surrounded mostly by mobile homes, was a wasteland. According to the National Hurricane Center, Andrew destroyed 25,524 homes, including 1,167 of 1,176 mobile homes in Homestead. There were 65 fatalities and damage was estimated at $25 billion.

Sanchez, who had dabbled in promoting races in the Miami area, had endeared himself to racing society when he paid the full purse after rains halted his first race through the streets of downtown Miami after only 27 of 168 laps.

With Alex Muxo, then Homestead’s city manager, Sanchez negotiated a deal that would build a track to help in the revitalization of the area. The original budget was $14 million, but by the time the track opened in November 1995, the cost had escalated to an estimated $60 million.

To help with his investment, Sanchez took on financier H. Wayne Huizenga as a partner. In July 1997 the ownership was expanded with Penske Motorsports and International Speedway Corp. joining the project. One year later, Penske and ISC acquired Sanchez’s remaining interest.

“I’m happy for Homestead and feel gratified that my vision has been fulfilled, but I’m still disappointed and angry that I’m no longer a part of it,” Sanchez told the Miami Herald.

Instead of being here today when the racing world will be watching, Sanchez said he would be fishing in the Bahamas, “maybe watching on television.”

The track’s 72,000 seats have been sold out for weeks.

Why Homestead-Miami, rather than such long-established tracks as Daytona, Darlington or Atlanta, where the finale had been held from 1985 to 2001?

“Weather, marketing and the drivers and the desire of their families to come to South Florida,” Brian France, NASCAR’s chief executive, said Saturday, pointing to a sunshine-filled blue sky. “You can’t beat weather like this for a race like we’ll have [today].

“We made the change after Atlanta had some rough times with bad weather and they requested an earlier date. After the new banking made Homestead a better race track, it was an easy decision. I expect we’ll be here for quite a while.”

The track was reconfigured last year as part of a $12-million project that increased the banking from six degrees to a computer-designed 20-degree variable banking in the turns.

It also doesn’t hurt that ISC is a public company controlled by the NASCAR-founding France family. Brian’s sister, Lesa Kennedy, is ISC president.

Martin, four times a runner-up for the Cup and one of the five contenders today, believes Homestead is an ideal finishing site.

“I think it is the perfect neutral setting for the championship,” he said. “I think it is an appropriate place for this time of the year. It’s a good geographic location and it gives you some kind of feel for the start of the season in Daytona. It’s a really cool race track.”

Homestead-Miami Speedway covers 434 acres and its brochure calls it “the most beautiful racing facility anywhere on the planet.” That might be open to argument from a number of places, but Homestead’s distinctive Art Deco architecture is an impressive landmark in a sea of mobile homes.

Most of the drivers, who rarely agree on anything, applaud the new banking that will permit side-by-side racing through the smooth transition corners. This will be the second time for Nextel Cup teams on the new surface. Bobby Labonte won last year’s Ford 400.

“The banking has only one race under its belt, yet it’s changed dramatically from last year,” said Busch. “The amount of grip and the level of intensity that this track is going to have with these final competitors going after the few select points that are available, it takes on a whole new outlook.

“This is what NASCAR wanted with its new Chase for the Cup, an opportunity for five competitors to come down to the final race to see who has the best possible finish to win the championship.”

Despite Busch’s 18-point lead, there is an undercurrent in the garages and along pit row that the winner and the 2004 champion will come from the Hendrick Motorsports pair, Johnson and Gordon.

Busch won the first of 10 races in the Chase for the Championship and led Johnson by 247 points after four races before he began to falter. The big blow was a 42nd place at Atlanta, a race Johnson won, gaining 142 points on the leader.

Momentum is important in racing and Johnson has it with four wins in the last five races.

“Momentum is a lot like confidence, you don’t know you have it,” said Jamie McMurray, who has clinched 11th place in the Cup standings, an accomplishment that will pay $1 million at the NASCAR awards banquet. “You don’t know what you did to get it, but when you don’t have it you don’t know how to get it back. When it’s on your side, you feel like you can’t do anything wrong.”

Johnson lost a bit of that momentum Friday when he failed to qualify and had to take a provisional. He will start today’s race in 39th place. His No. 48 Chevrolet had a problem with the left front shock that was not discovered until it was taken off the car and tested on the dyno.

In Saturday’s final practice session, Johnson was second fastest of the 43 starters. Only Greg Biffle was faster on a day when nearly all of the teams were testing race conditions with full fuel tanks.

“I keep hearing about our momentum, but if you ask me I would say that everyone in the Chase has had a lot of momentum just to get here,” said Johnson, the former off-road desert racer from El Cajon. “Things have been working out for us, it’s been nice to capitalize on it. As far as [today] is concerned, I just have to go out and run my own race and put out our best effort and go from there.

“So I have the mind-set that if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. I feel I have that because I thought I was out of it and now I’m back in it.”

Gordon, with four championships and 69 race wins -- five this year -- would probably be favored if there was betting on the race because of his ability to make the most out of bad situations and still score points.

“It’s all about who puts the best race car out there and doesn’t make mistakes and finishes ahead of the other guys,” said Gordon.

Asked about racing against Johnson, his teammate, Gordon said, “Jimmie and I have always raced each other the same. We’re going to be sharing information, just like we always do. It benefits us as much as them.

“Jimmie is a hard-charging driver, and we have a lot of respect for one another. We’re going to be battling one another no matter what.”

It would take a miracle for either Earnhardt or Martin to win the championship, although Dale Jr. likes to mention the Boston Red Sox when it comes to miracles.

“We dug ourselves a pretty big hole at Darlington,” Earnhardt said of his 11th-place finish last week. “We’re going to have to be the best team as well as the luckiest Sunday. I think the Red Sox kind of showed everybody this year what a team can achieve by not giving up, so we’ll start the race still thinking we have a chance to win the championship.”