NASCAR Homestead-Miami 2017 live stream: Time, TV channel, starting grid, and how to watch online

NASCAR will crown its 2017 Monster Energy Cup Series champion Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, site of the Ford 400. The final race will see Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr. vie for the championship with whoever finishes best among them winning the title.

The four finalists earned spot by advancing through the previous nine playoff races featuring 16 drivers, either by winning or points accumulation. Busch, Harvick and Keselowski are each seeking their second series championship, with Truex his first.

Denny Hamlin, who was eliminated in the semifinals after a controversial run-in with Chase Elliott, will start on the pole Sunday. The Joe Gibbs Racing drivers posted a 173.980 mph lap around the mile-and-a-half oval in qualifying on Friday.

Truex qualified second, with Busch third, Keselowski fifth and Harvick ninth. Truex and Keselowski are both winless at Homestead, while Harvick (2014) and Busch (2015) each have a single win on the South Florida track.

The Ford 400 will be televised on NBC beginning with the network’s pre-race coverage at 2 p.m. ET, with the green flag scheduled to wave at 2:46 p.m. ET. Rick Allen will handle play-by-play duties and be joined in the broadcast booth by analysts Jeff Burton and Steve Letarte.

Cup Series championship final preview

Yet it is the one finalist who’s never won a title, Martin Truex Jr., that Keselowski, Harvick, and Busch each believes is the clear favorite. The Furniture Row Racing driver has been the standard barrier throughout the season, leading every major statistical category and his speed on intermediate sized speedways, like Homestead, is especially overpowering with six of his seven victories having come on mile-and-a-half-tracks.

The role of favorite is not something Truex shies away from, instead he embraces the prospect of being the driver everyone else is chasing. This is his second time qualifying for the Final Four and when he did so in 2015 he was the decided underdog, which ultimately bared out on the track. He finished fourth that year, with Busch narrowly defeating Harvick for the championship.

“If I’m the favorite, perfect, I like that,” Truex said. “I think it’s a better position to be in. I was the underdog before and I finished fourth. So bring it on.

“I feel like we’re in a whole lot better spot as a team than we were the first time we had a shot at it. We’re going to go out there and just do the best job we can do. I’ve got a lot of confidence in our team right now and what we’re doing.”

Longtime friends Dale Earnhardt Jr., Matt Kenseth prepare for retirement together

Since then, Earnhardt and Kenseth have been seemingly indelibly linked. After competing against one another in the Xfinity Series, they advanced to the Cup Series where they have gone on to start more than 600 races together.

And fittingly, the close friends who frequently go on cycling rides will conclude their eventual Hall of Fame careers together. Each making what is likely their final Cup Series start in Sunday’s season-ender at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

“We supported each other and enjoyed seeing each other have success,” Earnhardt said. “Matt, I love his sense of humor, I love the person he is and the person he has become, the father he is.

“He has always had an influence on me as far as how I race or the person I want to be or become. … It’s going to make Homestead even more emotional because we came in together.”

But how Earnhardt and Kenseth reached this juncture in their careers and how they’re leaving came about due to widely different circumstances — which in Kenseth’s case he had little control over.

Martin Truex Jr. not lacking motivation to win championship in emotion-filled season

But the juxtaposition between balancing success on the track with life events off it is something FRR unfortunately is well-versed in this season. Truex’s longtime girlfriend, Sherry Pollex, is battling a recurrence of ovarian cancer, crew chief Cole Pearn’s close friend died unexpectedly from a bacterial infection in August, and last month crew member James Watson, 55, died after a go-kart team outing on the race weekend at Kansas Speedway.

“It’s definitely been tough at times and rough, but we’ve always been there for each other and made it through,” Truex said. “I think that shows a sign of strength, and hopefully we can rely on that this weekend if things get tough at some point in time.”

Kyle Busch seeking to silence his critics by winning second championship

And if Busch can secure another title on Sunday it would make him just the 16th driver to win a second championship in NASCAR’s premier division. Perhaps then his critics would quiet down.

“There’s a lot of arguments being made that we didn’t deserve the first one, we should never have been there for the first one, but the fact of the matter is we executed and did our job with the rules that were given to us, and we achieved,” Busch said. “This would just kind of put ourselves in another elite group of guys and drivers and teams that have been really, really good over the years that have been able to go win championships.”

Kevin Harvick locked in on championship after playoff surge

“We were late bloomers to the party just for the fact that we had a lot of work to do,” Harvick said. “We had a lot of change and we had a lot of things that we had to navigate and maneuver and get to the point of being competitive like we are right now.

“So we feel good about where we are. We won Texas, and have run good really at every mile‑and‑a‑half racetrack that we’ve been to, and we’re back to the point of being able to lead laps, and that’s when you can win races is when you can lead laps.”

Brad Keselowski wants second championship to secure legacy

“It’s almost a certainty that two gets you into the Hall of Fame,” Keselowski said. “Multiple championship drivers always will be. So I see this my chance to make it into the Hall of Fame. That’s something I don’t want to take for granted.

“I literally only have to beat three people to do it. That’s somewhat hard for me to digest or comprehend with all the different scenarios in front of me.”