Kyle Busch is ready to chase first Sprint Cup title after horrific crash

Kyle Busch never let doubt creep in, even with a mangled leg. Someone else with a double compound fracture in his right leg and a fracture of his left foot may have caved in emotionally.

Busch did no such thing. Broken leg, not broken spirit.

He set up a bar set atop his hospital bed at Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach so he could do pull-ups. The goal: Gather strength so he could return to racing at some point after a crash on the eve of the Daytona 500 in February.

“He was awesome,” said his team owner, Joe Gibbs. “He was up. He was after it. He was off pain medication the second day. He was already trying to work out. He was after it from Day One.”

Day One segues into the last day of the season, Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Busch is now one of the last four men standing for the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup title. He joins Jeff Gordon, Martin Truex Jr. and defending champion Kevin Harvick as drivers who will make a run at the title. First man to the finish line wins.

“He’s the favorite,” Gordon said of Harvick. “We’re the sentimentals.”

Busch’s story of resilience is sandwiched between the feel-good spin of the retiring Gordon’s last Cup ride, and Truex’s improbable rise after an also-ran season in 2014.

Busch’s car veered off the track with just a few laps left in an Xfinity Series race in February. The car went across the grass and crashed head-on into an unprotected interior wall without a SAFER barrier.

Broken bones heal. You never know about the mental deal. Gibbs had experience in this kind of trauma. As coach of the Washington Redskins, he had seen his quarterback, Joe Theismann, go down 30 years ago in one of the most horrific injuries in NFL history. A hit from Lawrence Taylor caused a gruesome break of Theismann’s right leg between the knee and the ankle.

Theismann never played another down. As for Busch, “You are never sure how somebody is going to come back from such a brutal injury,” Gibbs said. “Are they going to be more cautious driving the car?”

Nah.

Although he missed 11 races, Busch was granted a waiver from NASCAR, making him eligible for a postseason berth as long as he won a race and finished the regular season within the top 30 in points. He did a tad better than that, winning four races — starting in June at Sonoma Raceway — before moving on and advancing to each round in the Chase elimination series.

“I wouldn’t said that I could have [imagined the moment],” Busch said during the Chase Media Day Thursday afternoon. “I was trying to figure out whether or not I was going to be eligible once I returned and whether I could make up enough points to get myself in contention to be Chase-eligible come Richmond.”

All that accomplished, Busch turns to the task ahead on Sunday. Harvick is the favorite, but Busch — nickname “Rowdy” — is not one to back down from a fight. Contentious? Perhaps.

Busch and Harvick have a blood feud history from the 2011 season when Harvick threw a punch at Busch through his car window after a race in Darlington. Busch responded by ramming into Harvick’s car and spinning it on pit road.

All seems fine now, but white flags rarely get waved in competitive fire. Busch has a lot to gain on Sunday — Toyota’s first Cup driver’s championship and, most importantly, his first title as a Cup driver.

“We’ve done what we’ve needed to do within the Chase to keep moving on,” Busch said. “We may have been the last guy moving on each time but it doesn’t matter if you’re first or last. I’m talking against Ricky Bobby right there. It only matters in the last round that you’re the No. 1 guy.”