The 2012 season has been one crazy ride, from two brand new champions to one back-to-back champion. From AJ Allmendinger being suspended, to Dale Earnhardt Jr. sitting out for two weeks with a concussion. It has been a season of ups and downs within all three series of NASCAR competition.
The Camping World Truck Series Champion is James Buescher. Buescher ended the season with four wins, ten top five finishes, fourteen top ten finishes and a six point lead over Timothy Peters. “It wasn’t pretty. It was a little messy, but we did it. This is definitely the coolest thing I’ve ever done in racing. It was close. Ty (Dillon) was giving us a run for it, I just about went into the wall myself, but I held it together and everything came our way,” Buescher said.
The Nationwide Series Champion is Ricky Stenhouse Jr, for the second-consecutive year in a row Stenhouse Jr. has come out on top. He ended the season with six wins, nineteen top five finishes and twenty-six top ten finishes and a twenty-three point lead over Elliott Sadler. “We won Rookie of the Year in 2010 and we were at the banquet, and we said that we wanted to be there in 2011, and we were able to accomplish that. To sit up there last year, and we told each other that we wanted six to ten wins and another championship, we got that, just a lot of hard work by a lot of great people, and I’m just blessed to be a part of it,” Stenhouse Jr said.
The Sprint Cup Champion is Brad Keselowski. He has come a long way to be the new NASCAR Sprint Cup champion, beating out not only Clint Bowyer but also “Mr. 5-time” Jimmie Johnson. Keselowski lead the points standings for six weeks. In only 125 starts, Keselowski dominated the season with five wins, thirteen top five finishes and twenty-three top ten finishes and a thirty-nine point lead over Clint Bowyer. “I’ve used that as a chip on my shoulder to carry me through my whole career. It took until this year for me to realize that that was right, man, they were right. I’m not big enough, fast enough, strong enough. No person is. Only a team can do that,” Keselowski said.
