This race was known as the deciding race of the 2004 Nextel Cup champion in the first ever Chase for the Nextel Cup, in which five drivers were still mathematically alive for the championship including the points leader, Kurt Busch with an 18-point margin ahead of Jimmie Johnson, who earned the most wins in 2004, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and veteran Mark Martin. Those five chasers are separated by an 82-point margin from first to fifth for the final race. At the start of lap 1, Hermie Sadler got turned sideways while Mike Bliss was spun around but Johnson survived the wreck in the following caution. On lap 93, championship leader Kurt Busch was about to come to pit road. Busch told his crew on the radio that he had a flat right front tire. As Busch came out of the access road off of turn 4 that leads to the pits, Kurt lost the right front wheel. As the wheel came off, he almost hit the yellow barrels on the entrance of pit road which could have ended in a much different result. The caution came out as the wheel rolled down the entire front stretch. As a result of the tire loss, he lost the championship lead to Jeff Gordon, though Busch took back the points lead. With 3 laps to go, race leader Ryan Newman made some contact and lost the right side of the tire, the caution was out and set a Green-white-checker finish at Homestead. At the restart, Greg Biffle held off the hard charging Hendrick teams of Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon for the race lead and took the checkered flag to win the Ford 400, while Johnson and Gordon finished 2nd and 3rd. Kurt Busch won the 2004 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Championship by just 8 points over Johnson with a 5th-place finish after starting on the Pole and leading the opening 4 laps, the closest margin in Cup history until the 2011 season, won by Tony Stewart. Stewart and Carl Edwards were tied following the 2011 season's last race, the Cup going to Stewart by virtue of more wins on the season, 5 to 1 respectively.
