"Maybe I just wasn't meant to win this race as a driver, maybe I'm meant to win it 20 times as an owner, " said Michael, who also won the championship in 1991.
The five-time defending NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion is the only driver to win five consecutive championships.
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Finland's Raikkonen was the last driver to win the championship for Ferrari with his triumph five years ago.
Kenseth is just the third NASCAR driver to win on his birthday, joining Cale Yarborough who did it twice and Busch.
Vettel became the youngest driver to win three world titles as he overhauled Ferrari's Fernando Alonso in the final third of the season.
The GoDaddy.com Super Bowl mainstay has now made Sprint Cup history, becoming the first female driver to win the pole position for the storied Daytona 500.
Already she is the first female driver to win the pole position for a NASCAR Sprint Cup race, with a qualifying lap speed of 196.434 mph.
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Hamilton, who became the youngest driver to win the Formula One world title this year, will also perform a demonstration run in his McLaren F1 car.
"I think two years back we would have loved to have been in Fernando's position, " said Vettel, who is hoping to become only the third driver to win three titles in a row after Juan Manuel Fangio, the great champion of the 1950s, and Vettel's fellow countryman Michael Schumacher.
Hamilton's simmering rivalry with his McLaren teammate Fernando Alonso spilled over to the racetrack, dashing his hopes to win his first Formula One driver's title.
Vettel, who is the only driver apart from Button to actually win a race this season following his victory in China, was the dominant driver throughout the weekend.
Sunday will crown a new winner after the five-year reign of Jimmie Johnson (Stewart was the last driver before Johnson to win the title).
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If Alonso crosses the line first or second on Sunday the title will be his, but should the Spaniard finish third or worse and Webber win then the Australian Red Bull driver would take the crown.
With all the Texas-sized fanfare you would expect from the first Grand Prix held in the U.S. in five years girls parading around the grid in cowboy boots, a flyover, and a skydiver holding the Stars and Stripes the stage was set for Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel to become only the third driver in history to win three straight titles.
Red Bull driver Vettel claimed his second win of the season in the 57-lap race, after starting at No. 2 on the grid, as he moved 10 points clear of Kimi Raikkonen in the championship standings.
Last season Schumacher became the first driver in F1 history to win six championships, but he had to wait until the last race to achieve the record after being pushed all the way by McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen.
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The platform for Loeb's win was created on Saturday when the Citroen driver won all six of the day's stages while Gronholm struggled on the wrong tyres.
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The Citroen driver, bidding for his sixth win in a row, will begin the leg in fourth, 74 seconds behind the leader but just two seconds behind the Citroen of third-placed Petter Solberg.
Keselowski is the first driver besides Stewart or Jimmie Johnson to win the championship since 2004.
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Harvick was the only Childress driver to qualify for the Chase or win a race last year.
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This is the strategy that helped him win the 2006 British Open, where he hit driver only once.
It means that Vettel is only the third driver in the history of the sport to win three successive titles, equalling the achievements of Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio and Michael Schumacher.
To him, franchising is a sure way to kill NASCAR's founding notion (a myth at this point) that any driver can show up at the track and win on any given Sunday.
How can a driver who took until his seventh season to even win a race really be mentioned in the same breath as such instant legends as Fernando Alonso or Lewis Hamilton?
It was the 88th career win for Schumacher, who now trails Alonso by 17 points in the driver standings.
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The win pushed Sato to second in the IndyCar standings, and was redemption for the Honda driver.
The Somerset-born driver says he is still savouring his victory almost two months after sealing the win at the penultimate race of the 2009 season in Brazil.
Ecclestone tipped Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel to retain his drivers' championship and become only the third driver after Argentina's Juan Manuel Fangio and fellow German Michael Schumacher to win three titles in a row.
Toyota driver Timo Glock was fourth with Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel following up his win in Italy this month with fifth.
The Ferrari driver had been aiming to become the first Brazilian since the late Ayrton Senna in 1991 to win the drivers' title.
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