MIAMI _ NASCAR's final season-ending championship race at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday will be the perfect finish in a lot of ways.
The four finalists for the main-race crown _ Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. _ won a combined 21 races this season, none fewer than four.
No interlopers here. The playoffs worked. The cream rose. The season's four top drivers are left standing, and so someone undeniably worthy is going to ride the Ford EcoBoost 400 to the Monster Energy Cup Series championship trophy.
It's Super Bowl Sunday. But on four wheels. At 200 mph.
(So what is it that's missing?)
There is pedigree here. Harvick (2014), Busch (2015) and Truex (2017) all have won season championships within the past five years. Busch is the winningest driver of this decade.
But there also is the requisite Cinderella-in-a-fire-suit _ the easy rooting interest for any race fans whose favorite driver didn't make the Championship 4.
That would be Hamlin, 38, the only finalist who has not reigned for a season. He has 37 race wins and 258 top-10s in a 15-year main-circuit career, but has yet to end a season smiling.
"It's motivation, undeniably," Hamlin said Thursday at an interview session in Miami Beach. "This is the most free we've been all year. We've got a free ticket to go win a championship. I feel like the racetrack really, really suits my style."
Asked if his rivals have trash-talked him about never having won, Hamlin smiled and drew laughs in saying, "I think we're all aware that I have not. It's well-documented at this point."
Hamlin finished second in 2010 despite winning eight races that year and leading into Homestead. He finished third in 2006. He's had 10 top-10s.
He is the most accomplished active driver to not win a season title.
(So what is it that's missing?)
Homestead is all but assured an historic finish in its final (for now) season-ending race, before the track and South Florida are relegated to a March date beginning next year as championship weekend moves to Phoenix. The season finale is expected to rotate cities, Super Bowl-style, so Homestead getting the last race again someday cannot be ruled out.
For now, on Sunday, Homestead will either crown a two-time champion, or see Hamlin find his redemption at last after a career of near misses.
There are no neophytes here, no rising stars. The final four average 38.5 years of age, with Busch the kid at 34. They are of the same generation of drivers.
"The four of us have raced each other a long time," as Truex put it Thursday. "A lot of years."
They've all been on NASCAR's main stage since around the early 2000s.
"It's the 'Old Guys Rule' up here," noted Hamlin, looking around at the other three.
"This is the Big 3 (former champions) with the new one," added Busch.
(So what is it that's missing?)
NASCAR's grand finale will be won by one of four finalists who are all accomplished veterans who together have 167 career race wins. All are familiar names with lots of fans.
But none is a true superstar. None is a transcendent force in the sport.
All four finalists were emerging right around the time Jeff Gordon won his fourth and final season crown in 2001. And all have seen their own career's timeline overshadowed by Jimmie Johnson, whose record-tying seventh season title came in 2016.
NASCAR finds itself at an interesting crossroads. Something is missing.
Gordon retired after the 2016 season. So did magnetic star and three-time champion Tony Stewart. Dale Earnhardt Jr., never a season champ but voted most popular driver every year, retired after 2017.
That's a ton of star power, recently disappeared.
Johnson still is active _ he's running at Homestead on Sunday _ but he is 44 now and coming off his worst season, an 18th-place finish that left him out of the 16-driver playoffs for the first time.
Johnson has not announced his retirement. "I'm not done yet" he likes to say. Clearly his best days appear done, though.
Gordon, Stewart and Johnson combined to win 14 of 22 championships between 1995 and 2016. There always was a giant out there. Somebody you loved, or loved to hate. There is not that person now. No giant.
So: Next, please?
NASCAR needs another transcendent superstar like the retired Gordon and Stewart, the fading Johnson or, yes, Dale Jr. _ someone who draws a national audience above and beyond hardcore gearheads.
Maybe someone among Sunday's Championship 4 will be the late-bloomer ("Old Guys Rule") who still rises to become just that.
NASCAR needs somebody to be.
