He took the lead for good on a late restart and ran away from the field in the closing laps to win Sunday’s Quicken Loans 400. The No. 16 Ford driver won his second straight race here and the 19th of his career. Four of those victories have come at MIS.

“It’s definitely a special day,” Biffle said after delivering Ford Motor Co. its 1,000th victory in NASCAR’s three national touring series. “Just super-excited for Ford and sure excited to be No. 1,000.”

The win secured Biffle a berth in the 2014 NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race and moved him up a spot to eighth in the standings.

Second a week ago at Pocono, Biffle led the pack to the restart on lap 173 and outran Martin Truex Jr. to stay out front. He led a race-best 48 laps.

Owner Jack Roush’s operations center is in suburban Detroit and he considers MIS his home track. He was beaming almost as broadly as his driver.

“We expect to be at our best when we come to MIS and I am glad we could pull it off,” Roush said. “I was a little nervous for a minute there, but I am glad it worked out and glad we could give Ford its 1,000th win.”

Sprint Cup Series points leader Jimmie Johnson was gaining on Biffle in the final laps but a cut right front tire took him off the track with two laps to go.

Kevin Harvick finished second and Truex, Kyle Busch and Tony Stewart rounded out the top five.

Johnson took second a few laps before his misfortune and Harvick backed out of the throttle to hold on to at least a third-place finish.

“It was the third set of tires we had and they felt a little wobbly,” he said. “We just wanted to hold our track position.”

Biffle still was impressed with Johnson, whom he finished second to a week ago at Pocono.

“The guy was 10 (on the restart) and was catching me with 10 to go,” Biffle said. “That’s a fast race car.

“We beat the 48 today and that says a lot. He was really, really fast.”

Johnson ended the day 28th to wrap up a tough day for Hendrick Motorsports. None of the racing giant’s four entries cracked the top 25.

Pole winner Carl Edwards, who trailed Johnson by 51 points at the start of the race, cut 20 points off the deficit by finishing eighth.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. took the lead near the halfway point and appeared strong, but a blown engine ended his race on lap 131.

“It made a lot of damage there when it broke,” he said after leading 34 laps at the track where he ended his 143-race dry spell a year ago. “I’m not sure they’re going to be able to figure out what happened.”

Jamie McMurray led 21 laps but fell out of contention when he blew a right front tire on lap 167.

The day’s worst-looking wreck came shortly after the midway point when Kasey Kahne struck the wall near turn 2. The car caught fire as Kahne was getting out, but he stuck his arm back inside to trigger the fire-suppression system. He was not hurt.

Kurt Busch started on the outside of the front row and led the first 21 laps but spun and smacked the turn 2 wall two laps later.

Stewart ran his streak of top-seven finishes to four straight races and jumped from 13th to 10th in the standings.

There were showers after Saturday’s Nationwide Series race and NASCAR gave crews a competition caution 20 laps in to assess tire wear on the clean surface.

The Sprint Cup Series continues next Sunday when drivers run the first road course of the season in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway.

He held off the rookie in the final 14 laps to win the Alliance Truck Parts 250 at Michigan International Speedway and extend his lead in the series standings. He took the checkered flag minutes before a light rain began to fall on the race track.

Parker Kligerman gambled rain would end the race short of the scheduled 125 laps but lost the lead when he had to pit with 13 to go. That opened the door for Smith, who kept his No. 7 Chevy ahead of a charging Larson in the final 10 laps.

“I felt confident even though he was drafting up to me,” said Smith, who found himself near the front after a Lap 99 stop for fuel.

“It seemed like once we got the car out front it really came to life. (Crew chief) Greg (Ives) made some really good calls to get us the track position.”

Ives said he did all he could to make sure his driver got as close to the front of the pack as he could in the closing laps.

“The strategy was to get him up front and let him get confident and comfortable,” he said.

It made for a pleasant homecoming for Ives, a native of Bark River in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

There was no caution flag after Austin Dillon brushed the wall with five laps to go and Larson, who was steadily gaining on Smith in the closing laps, never got a chance to take the lead.

Sprint Cup Series regular Paul Menard gave Chevy a sweep of the top three spots and Kyle Busch and Trevor Bayne rounded out the top-five finishers.

It was the second win of the season and third career series win for Smith, who also was first at Talladega in early May. It’s the 11th straight time he’s finished in the top 10.

Smith, who started 11th, paid tribute to late driver Jason Leffler by displaying a decal over the door pillar of his car and promised a portion of his $45,440 winnings to the trust fund created to assist Leffler’s 5-year-old son.

Leffler, a two-time winner on the Nationwide circuit, died last week after his sprint car crashed at a dirt track in New Jersey. A moment of silence in his honor was held before the start of the race.

Larson, the series’ top rookie, finished in the top five for the fourth time this season and matched his career-best runner-up finish at Bristol.

“It’d be nice to hurry up and get the win,” he said. “I think it’s coming soon. We’re getting better every week. Once we go to the tracks a second time I hopefully should start out the races better and hopefully maintain track position.”

Drivers qualified under warm conditions earlier in the day but took the green flag under overcast, muggy skies that made the track slick. The forecast was threatening, but rain never came.

Pole winner Dillon looked strongest in the first half of the race but opted not to pit with the rest of the lead pack after a lap 64 caution. A flat left-rear tire soon dropped him a lap down and he ended the day 20th after his late-race contact with the wall.

Joey Logano took the lead after a lap 86 restart but gave it to Kligerman when he pitted 13 laps later. Kligerman was 19th in the unofficial standings but was dropped to 25th after speeding onto pit road for his final stop.

Dillon set a new track qualifying record with a lap of 191.882 mph earlier in the day to earn his fourth straight Coors Light Pole Award, a Nationwide Series record.

It was the second straight hard-luck outing for Dillon, who led 207 of 250 laps a week earlier at Iowa but finished second to Bayne.

Sam Hornish Jr., who started the day second in the standings, left the race on lap 81 after a piece of debris broke his oil pump. It dropped him to 32nd and widened his deficit in the standings.

Hornish fell from 23 points behind Smith to 58. Justin Allgaier crept to just a point behind him.

“There is nothing wrong with our Roush Yates engine other than we hit a piece of debris,” Hornish said. “We knew we had a good car that was capable of winning. It just wasn’t our day.”

The race wasn’t quite a lap old before the first caution came out. Alex Bowman and Travis Pastrana spun in turn 4 before Brian Vickers crashed into Jeffrey Earnhardt. The latter two cars sustained significant damage.

Vickers, seventh in the series points standings before the start of the race, got back on the track but finished 33rd, 45 laps off the lead. The lead dropped him back to 10th in the standings.

Dexter Stacey brought out the day’s second yellow flag when he struck the turn 3 wall on lap 7.

A week after a penalty for jumping the final restart at Dover knocked Johnson out of a near-certain victory, Johnson absolutely scorched the field in Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Party in the Poconos 400, beating Greg Biffle to the finish line by 1.208 seconds.

The win was Johnson’s third of the season, his third at the Tricky Triangle and the 63rd of his career. Johnson increased his series lead over second-place Carl Edwards (18th Sunday) to a staggering 51 points after 14 races.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. ran third, followed by Stewart-Haas Racing teammates Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman. Kyle Busch, Kurt Busch, Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick and Joey Logano completed the top 10.

“What a race car!” Johnson said after climbing from the No. 48 Chevrolet in Victory Lane. “Not only a great race car but an engine. We had fuel mileage and plenty of power. It was awesome on the straightaways today to be able to do what I wanted around other cars.

“So hats off to chassis, aero and the engine shop for this awesome race car.”

You might think winning at Pocono for the first time since he swept both races here in 2004 might assuage the sting of last week’s penalty. You’d be wrong.

“No, but it’s OK,” Johnson said. “It doesn’t make up for much, but we know we’re a great race team. Things won’t keep us down. We had a great race car today and had a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun out there.”

Johnson avoided a surfeit of action in the late stages of the race–because he was ahead of it. By the time Dave Blaney’s spin brought out the fourth caution on Lap 138, the five-time champion already had led 106 laps.

That yellow followed a caution for an accident in the Tunnel Turn on Lap 133, when Juan Pablo Montoya drove hard into the corner under Matt Kenseth, lost control of his No. 42 and started a synchronized spin with Kenseth.

Subsequently, Johnson had to endure four restarts but did so as the leader and quickly regained control of the race in each instance. All told, Johnson led 128 of 160 laps.

Biffle was happy with a runner-up finish that jumped him three positions to 10th in the standings, but he conceded that his No. 16 Ford was no match for Johnson’s Chevy SS.

“Jimmie was in a league of his own,” said Biffle, who took the green flag from the fourth position on the final restart with four laps left and surged past Earnhardt and Kyle Busch in the first corner. “I was going to have to get up beside him, take the air off him–something to try and gain an advantage.

“But I gave him such a good push on the restart I couldn’t catch back up with him… I couldn’t get him.”

Though Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Kyle Busch and Hamlin finished sixth and eighth, respectively, Hamlin said he could feel a reduction in horsepower in his TRD (Toyota Racing Development) engine, after the engines were detuned in favor of reliability in reaction to several recent valve train failures.

“Any horsepower change is going to be a difficult thing to overcome, especially this week and next week (at Michigan), our two horsepower race tracks,” Hamlin said. “I wouldn’t be opposed to say that other guys probably stepped up coming to this race track, and we took a step back.

“It’s kind of a double whammy, but it’s something TRD’s going to work through.”

The 22-year-old joked over the radio that he should have gotten married a long time ago after he concluded a stunning and exciting late-race comeback Sunday.

Bayne exchanged vows with new wife, Ashton, on Tuesday and celebrated their honeymoon by winning the NASCAR Nationwide Series DuPont Pioneer 250 at Iowa Speedway. He endured the long day that included a more than one hour rain delay for his first Nationwide win this season and second of his career.

The married couple was reunited in victory lane, Bayne’s pass with 11 laps remaining to pass Austin Dillon, who had led a whopping 207 laps.

“It’s such a special week for me,” Bayne said. “I was teared up at the altar on Tuesday and teared up on victory lane on Sunday.”

The Roush Fenway team was all smiles, including Ashton, who attended the post-race press conference. The victory was the fourth in the last five Nationwide races at Iowa Speedway for crew chief Mike Kelley, who guided Ricky Stenhouse to three straight wins here in 2011 and 2012.

“This team at Iowa has been so good,” Bayne said. “It’s such an opportunity and a blessing to be a part of this team.”

Bayne closed the gap and pulled alongside Dillon with about 15 laps remaining when Dillon seemed slower due to lap traffic.

The pair made contact and Dillon became loose, allowing Bayne to pass and pull away for the victory.

“We ran him down,” said Bayne, who earned a second straight top-five finish and fourth overall this season. “We were able to race him pretty hard.”

The long runs seemed to benefit Bayne more than Dillon. It played a factor that the race remained green for the last 72 laps after the fifth and final caution. The goal was to keep Dillon in sight for the late surge and it became a strong possibility about five laps before the final lead change, according to Bayne.

“We weren’t great on the short run, but the long run we could really get after him,” Bayne said. “I knew we had to keep that lead to a minimum, while he was fast on the restart, so we could catch him at the end of the run.”

It also marked the 200th win for a Ford car on the Nationwide Series, which began in 1982 and ranks second to Chevrolet (376). Kelley said the team had to make huge progress on the car’s setup to contend for a win and provide that wedding present they wanted for the happy couple.

“Actually, when we unloaded we weren’t that good,” Kelley said. “Trevor did a really good job of telling us where we were wrong and what we needed to work on.”

They had to make numerous adjustments during a day of inconsistent conditions that varied between sunny and cloudy and dry and rainy. They had to constantly adapt, preferring the cloud cover. The race originally was scheduled for Saturday night but postponed due to rain.

“Our car changed very dramatically when the clouds were out to when the sun was out,” Bayne said. “We picked up two-tenths versus the competition as soon as the clouds were out. That was part of the reason we caught Austin at the end of that run.”

The team has faced adversity on and off the track all season long. They have persevered through tests, so the conditions, including the long delay, were easy to handle.

“Days like today are becoming (easier) for us because of all the things we’ve had to go through,” Kelley said. “We’ve had people in and out, crazy things happen to us on the race track we’ve seen happen to us before (and) we have to go back and rebound.”

Dillon dominated nearly the entire race, leading 156 of the first 187 laps.

Instead, the power wasn’t there at the end to close out the dominating performance. He said the No. 3 car didn’t have enough drive into the corner and Bayne was better at the end.

“We could get a big lead but started fading fast at the end of those runs,” Dillon said. “That’s just part of it.”

He didn’t seem to have an issue with the late contact with Bayne, who made contact with Regan Smith during a restart before the rain delay that helped Dillon jump from fourth to first before the red flag.

“That was good racing,” Dillon said. “Nothing wrong there.”

Dillon posted his best finish of the season, earning his third straight pole. He now has six top-five finishes and seven in the top 10.

“We’ll keep improving,” Dillon said. “It was a good points day.”

Elliott Sadler recorded another top-five finish at Iowa Speedway. He placed third, but was too far away to challenge the top two. Sadler rebounded from a disappointed finish at Dover International Speedway last week.

Things appear to be moving in the right direction.

“We knew coming into Iowa we could be competitive and run up front,” Sadler said. “We showed that today. This is a good momentum builder for me and my race team.”

Sam Hornish Jr., who battled Dillon for early, finished fourth after leading 22 laps. He now trails season points leader Regan Smith by 23 points. Smith finished seventh.

Kyle Larson, the highest finishing rookie, rounded out the top-five.

Burton, the 20-year-old son of 2002 Daytona 500 champion Ward Burton, posted his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series victory at the expense of Ty Dillon, grandson of NASCAR championship team-owner Richard Childress. Burton is the first winner among the 13 drivers comprising NASCAR Next, an initiative to spotlight the sanctioning body’s rising stars.

“It was really fun,” said Burton, driver of the No. 4 Chevrolet Silverado fielded by Turner Scott Motorsports. “I’m just living the dream. I’ve got a great team here. I want to thank Arrowhead and everyone in South Boston (his hometown in Virginia). It’s huge. I’ve been telling everybody once we get one (win) they’re going to start stacking-up. We’ve got the momentum going into Kentucky. Every week it’s fun to go to the racetrack. I’m just so pumped-up.”

Jeff Burton, Jeb’s uncle and a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series regular for team-owner Childress, won the first Cup race on TMS’ high-banked, 1.5-mile quadoval in April 1997.On Friday, Jeb took the lead from Dillon on a restart on Lap 144 of the scheduled 167 and motored to victory by 0.139-seconds.

German Quiroga finished third in his No. 77 Toyota Tundra, while series point-leader Matt Crafton finished fourth in the No. 88 Toyota. Crafton, who began the race with a 30-point lead over Burton, exited Texas with a 23-point advantage.

Burton, who started third, recorded his fifth top-10 finish of the season one year after watching this race on television because of a lack of sponsorship. “We worked very hard to get here,” said the winner, who led twice for 25 laps, including the final 24. “The sponsorship is out of my hometown. They’re family to us and I’m glad to get a win for them.”

Ward Burton celebrated with his son post-race at the track where he made nine career Cup starts between 1997 and 2006 with a best finish of seventh in 1997.

“Shoot man, this is the most special moment in motorsports I’ve ever experienced,” said Ward Burton, who won five Cup races with Bill Davis Racing during a 17-year career. “The biggest two races I won were the 500s at Darlington and Daytona. But anybody’s that’s got children, the experience of them and all the sacrifices you make for them to be successful, it’s such a different emotional experience. It’s hard to say it’s better (than winning himself) but it’s … at the top.”

Burton’s team is led by crew chief Mike Hillman Jr., who said he spent the last few laps trying to calm the rookie down. “What Jeb lacks in experience he makes up in talent,” said Hillman, who won six races at Texas Motor Speedway with two-time NASCAR Camping World Truck champion Todd Bodine. “I treat him like a little brother–pat him on the back when he needs it but also punch him on the arm. I’m really proud of Jeb.”

Team-owner and native Texan Steve Turner–father-in-law of reigning Camping World Truck Series champion James Buescher–also celebrated his first home state win. “I’ve watched Jeb all year long staying in single-digits (in race results),” Turner said. “He’s big-picture racing.”

A rejuvenated Brendan Gaughan finished fifth in his No. 62 Chevrolet after making a strong bid for what would have been his fifth career victory at TMS. Gaughan, who is Dillon’s Richard Childress Racing teammate, was looking to add to his personal history in Cowtown, where he scored that first win 11 years ago to the day–June 7, 2002. Gaughan is third in the point race, 35 behind Crafton and 12 behind Burton.

Dillon, meanwhile, closed with a rush over the final two laps. “It’s a heartbreaker,” said Dillon, driver of the No. 3 Chevrolet. “Our truck was the dominant truck all night. That last restart, it seemed like the No. 88 (of Crafton) gave the No. 4 (of Burton) a good push down the backstretch. I can’t blame it on anybody. You get a draft, that’s five extra horsepower. If I could do it again tomorrow, I’d do it again, take the top.”

Dillon led three times for a race-high 76 laps, with Gaughan leading twice for 44 laps. There were 12 lead changes among eight drivers.

“If we had one more corner…I’d like to make a request to move the straightaway here like Talladega right now,” Dillon joked. “But that’s cool for Jeb. Experience is a key in this series so all us rookies can do is drive our hearts out.”

Burton’s winning average speed was 142.984 mph. There were only three cautions for 16 laps.

Pole-sitter Johnny Sauter, who swept both Truck Series events here last year, finished seventh in the No. 98 Toyota.

After Johnson was assessed a drive-through penalty for jumping the final restart — a sanction Johnson protested vehemently — Stewart passed Juan Pablo Montoya on Lap 398 of 400 to win Sunday’s FedEx 400 benefiting Autism Speaks at Dover International Speedway.

The victory was the first of the season and third at Dover for Stewart, who has notched 42 of his 48 career wins after May 31. Stewart finished .788 seconds ahead of Montoya, who matched his career-best NASCAR Sprint Cup Series finish on an oval track.

Jeff Gordon came home third, followed by Kyle Busch and reigning Cup champion Brad Keselowski. Johnson finished 17th, the first car one lap down, smarting from a penalty he felt was unjustified.

But Keselowski’s Ford failed the height-stick test in post-race inspection (too low in the front), with penalties expected after NASCAR’s completion meeting during the coming week.

Stewart, whose struggles this year have been well-documented, was happy to take the win, no matter how it came his way. Coming on the heels of a seventh-place run last week at Charlotte, a 1.5-mile downforce track, Stewart was happy to point out the progress his team is making.

“It’s definitely momentum,” Stewart said. “We got two weeks of momentum under our belt now at two totally different race tracks. That is big. Momentum is huge in this sport. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. We won’t sit… I guarantee you none of these guys behind you (his crew) will tell you we are exactly where we want to be right now. It’s a good reward for how hard they have been working to get that first win of the year.

“Now it’s trying to be more consistent and stay in the top 10 more and make our program better. It’s proof that no matter how bad it’s been this year, none of these guys have quit and given up. Just really proud of the effort this weekend; I think we probably made more gains from Friday to right now than any team in the garage did. I’m really proud of that fact.”

If Stewart was elated after the race, Johnson was still fuming.

“I totally disagree with the call, but it is what it is, and we’ll just come back and try to win in the fall,” he said.

Johnson knew he had beaten Montoya to the start/finish line, not knowing whether something was wrong with Montoya’s car, and said he tried to give the position back to the Colombian driver.

“I ran half-throttle for the first half a lap, waiting for him, and then at some point you’ve got to go, and you’ve got to race, and that’s when I got back in the gas and took off,” he explained. “I was hoping they would see that I was trying to give him the spot back.”

NASCAR vice president Robin Pemberton, however, described the penalty as cut-and-dried.

“That was an easy call — a very easy call,” Pemberton said. “He beat the 42 even out of the (restart) box, from what we could see on the film, we give ‘em an opportunity to give it back.”

Until the decisive penalty, it looked for all the world as if Johnson would claim a record eighth victory at the Monster Mile.

Johnson started 24th and, in the early stages of the race, had difficulty moving forward through traffic. In fact, the No. 48 Chevrolet SS went a lap down when Kyle Busch passed him on Lap 70.

But Johnson came to pit road early, on Lap 71, and used the extra time on new tires to regain the lost lap by the time NASCAR called an opportune caution for debris in Turn 2 on Lap 80. From that point on, it was a charge to the front by the five-time champion.

Johnson had worked his way up to sixth before a caution for debris on the backstretch slowed the field on Lap 160, moments after a blown engine eliminated what was arguably the strongest car in the race, Matt Kenseth’s No. 20 Toyota.

After a restart on Lap 165, Johnson again moved forward, finally taking the lead for the first time on Lap 206, passing Kyle Busch to the inside through Turns 1 and 2.

Just as a Johnson victory was looking academic, however, Denny Hamlin’s right front tire blew in Turn 1 and sent his No. 11 Toyota hard into the outside wall, bringing out the seventh caution of the race. Montoya took two tires when the lead-lap cars came to pit road and narrowly beat Johnson to the exit.

That turned the race inside-out, as NASCAR black-flagged Johnson for beating Montoya to the start/finish line on the restart on Lap 382. Montoya held off Stewart for 16 laps but wore out his tires in the process and had to surrender the top spot.

“In one of the runs under green, we decided to make a couple of big changes on the car, and the car just took off — came to life,” Montoya said. “It came to life at the right time. It’s a shame there at the end that it was way too loose. I just couldn’t hold Tony off.”

Notes: Despite running 17th, Johnson holds a 30-point lead over second-place Carl Edwards (14th Sunday) in the series standings… Kyle Busch, who has two victories this season, moved back into ninth place after falling out of the top 10 last week at Charlotte… Hamlin’s crash put a serious crimp in his effort to qualify for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup despite missing four races with a back injury. Hamlin dropped two spots to 26th in the standings and is 74 points behind Ryan Newman in 20th, the position he needs to reach to be eligible for a Chase wild card.

Logano trailed race leader Kyle Busch by five seconds with 40 laps left, but a two-tire under the fifth and final caution got Logano out front for a restart with 34 laps left, while a four-tire choice on the same pit stop buried Kyle Busch in traffic and changed the course of the race.

The victory was Logano’s first of the season, his third straight at the Monster Mile and the 19th of his career. Brian Vickers ran second, .576 seconds behind Logano. Matt Kenseth finished third, followed by Trevor Bayne. Busch passed Sam Hornish Jr. for the fifth spot in the closing laps.

“It feels great to get back in Victory Lane,” Logano said. “This is my favorite race track. I love coming up to the Northeast — that’s where I’m from (Connecticut)…

“Really the winning call was on that last pit stop, when (crew chief) Jeremy (Bullins) made an audible and decided to do two tires.”

Bullins made the decisive call after observing that Busch was taking four and that there were enough other cars taking two tires to form a buffer between Logano and Busch.

Bullins said he made the snap decision as his crew was dropping the jack on the right side of the car.

“We had to let the jack man run around, but, luckily for us, there was still enough room for us to let the jack man come around the front of the car, leave pit road and still come out with the lead,” Bullins said. “That was really the difference. It was late (making) the call, but that’s just the way it plays out, and a lot of times you have to make a split decision like that.”

Kasey Kahne was an integral part of the third caution, on Lap 113, when he made Mike Wallace pay for repeatedly holding him up by punting Wallace’s car off Turn 2. Kahne used the opportunity to grab the race lead, thanks to a two-tire call under the yellow on Lap 114.

Kahne held off Busch after the restart on Lap 121, but a quick caution a lap later — after Reed Sorenson’s Chevy stalled at the exit from pit road — gave Busch another shot at a restart on Lap 129. Busch cleared Kahne into Turn 1 on the restart lap and opened a lead of nearly one second.

But a caution for Dexter Stacey’s spinoff Turn 4 on Lap 161 turned the race upside-down.

Busch and Kahne took four tires on a Lap 163 pit stop under caution, while nine other lead-lap cars went with two-tire calls and came out ahead of Busch and Kahne, who restarted 10th and 11th, respectively.

Mired in traffic, Busch struggled to move forward, and Logano, who led the field to green on Lap 167, drove away.

Vickers, the 2003 Nationwide Series champion, mirrored Logano’s tire strategy on the final caution and left the track with the satisfaction of a runner-up finish — but with an unsated hunger for a victory.

“Today was a good run for us,” said Vickers, who is in his inaugural Nationwide season with Joe Gibbs Racing. “As much as I want to win, I can’t deny that. We’ve got to take those moments when they come. Starting with a new team, a new organization, a new crew chief, a new everything this year, it’s most certainly taken us a little bit of time, probably a little longer than we wanted to really get into the rhythm of things.”

Busch sped away after a restart on Lap 197 of 200, as Crafton and third-place finisher Ryan Blaney battled for the second spot.

The victory was owner/driver Busch’s second of the season, his second win in a row, his third at Dover and the 32nd of his career. Chase Elliott, who started on the outside of the front row, overcame two pit road speeding penalties to finish fourth, one spot ahead of Brendan Gaughan, who posted his fourth straight top-five finish.

For Busch, however, the 21st victory on concrete in all three of NASCAR’s top touring series combined was not a typical dominating win.

Busch started fifth and had to fight traffic throughout the early stages of the race, while his crew made adjustments in the pits. Busch didn’t take the lead until he blew past David Starr on Lap 142 after a cycle of green-flag pit stops.

“It was unbelievable how loose it was following those guys,” Busch said of the early racing. “I had to get outside of their wake and kind of move around, and that’s where I started making up some ground. It was more later in the run than it was early in the run.

“These things are just so fast going around here, early in the run with a lot of tire grip and a lot of aero grip, but as the rubber goes down, it certainly gets slick and everybody has their hands full. These guys (his crew) made some nice adjustments for me to keep us on top of the race track and up front.”

Polesitter Darrell Wallace Jr. (10th Friday) led the first 119 laps of the race but surrendered the top spot Matt Crafton during a green-flag pit stop on Lap 120. By the time the round of pit stops had cycled through, Busch, who pitted on Lap 117, was at the front of the field with an advantage of more than five seconds over Wallace.

Saving fuel for a possible 83-lap run to the finish, Busch saw his lead dwindle to just over two seconds before crew chief Rudy Fugle gave him the green light to run at full speed. But a caution for debris in Turn 2 on Lap 158 made fuel strategy moot and gave the lead-lap cars a chance to pit.

Crafton won the race off pit road and surged ahead of Busch after a restart on Lap 164, but five laps later, Busch passed Crafton to the outside and began to stretch his advantage as Wallace and Timothy Peters battled for the fourth spot behind him.

Busch’s margin was just under a second when NASCAR called the fifth caution of the race on Lap 179, for debris on the frontstretch. Busch chose the outside lane for the restart on Lap 185 and got the jump on Crafton into the first corner.

Busch opened a lead of more than one second before Tim George Jr. blew a tire and smacked the Turn 3 wall on Lap 191 to cause the sixth caution and set up the dash to the finish.

Crafton now leads the series standings by 30 points over rookie Jeb Burton in second place.

Harvick pulled away during an 11-lap green-flag run to the finish to beat Kasey Kahne to the finish line by 1.491 seconds. The victory was Harvick’s second of the season, his second at Charlotte and the 21st of his career.

Kurt Busch ran third, followed by polesitter Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano. Ryan Newman, Tony Stewart, Clint Bowyer, Martin Truex Jr. and Marcos Ambrose completed the top 10.

On a night where the second half of the race produced non-stop action and plenty of contact, 10 spectators were injured when a TV camera drive line broke, three of them seriously enough to warrant transportation to a local hospital.

The speedway announced after the race that all injured  treated and released.

The pivotal moment in the race was a decision by Harvick and crew chief Gil Martin to come to pit road for two new tires after NASCAR called a debris caution on Lap 384 of 400. Kahne stayed out. In fact, he was the only driver to do so, and Harvick lined up beside the driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet for a restart on Lap 390 with a distinct advantage.

“It was a good strategy call there,” Harvick said. “The 5 stayed out, and we were able to have a little bit fresher tires and get in front of him on the restart… This is one of those nights where you just know going in that you’ve got to grind away, lap after lap to keep yourself on the lead lap and not make any mistakes…

“This is a long night. We’ve been here a lot of times and know that you just have to grind through mile after mile, keep your car running, don’t get tore up, don’t get a lap down, and you’re going to be somewhere around at the end. Everybody did that on our Budweiser Chevy tonight, and there we were at the end.”

For the third time this season on a 1.5-mile speedway, Kahne finished second with arguably the fastest car. Both he and crew chief Kenny Francis were surprised that Kahne was the only driver who stayed on the track during the final caution. Fresh rubber turned the tide in Harvick’s favor.

“We had a great car from the drop of the green, drove to the front from sixth,” said Kahne, who led a race-high 161 laps. “It was definitely our race to lose, especially those last 100 laps. We thought that some of the guys would stay out. I think there were three cars that had just pitted within the last couple laps, or five or six laps, and (we) just felt like they’d stay out, and that’d be a big enough buffer to someone who had two or four (new) tires, that we could get away.

“It didn’t happen. Harvick started right beside me and had two, and he held it flat through (Turns) 1 and 2, and I had to lift a little bit. I got a little free getting in, so I had to back off the gas, and when I went back down, he was in front of me. So that was the end of our race, and I had to make sure I got second from there.”

NASCAR’s longest race took an extraordinary turn on Lap 122 when a guide cable to the “CamCat,” the remote-control mobile camera that traverses the frontstretch, broke and fell across the track. Several cars sustained damage from running across the cable, most notably those of Ambrose and Kyle Busch, then the race leader.

A length of cable wrapped around Ambrose’s rear housing and severed a brake line. Contact with the fallen cable sliced open the front right quarter panel of Busch’s Toyota. NASCAR went off the pages of its own rule book under the exceptional circumstances and allowed all teams to repair their cars during a 15-minute break in the action.

The sanctioning body restored the running order before the cable broke, reinstating Ambrose, who lost four laps under repairs, to the lead lap for a restart on Lap 131. Busch’s team worked feverishly to reconstruct the damaged quarter panel with black Bear Bond tape.

Two red-flag periods totaling 27 minutes–the first for the broken cable, the second for repairs–took the race from daylight to dusk. Kyle Busch held the top spot after the Lap 131 restart, with brother Kurt Busch charging from sixth to second on the first restart lap.

The Busch brothers paced the field until Kenseth grabbed the lead from his teammate during a cycle of green-flag pit stops that began on Lap 171. From that point Kenseth dominated, until simultaneous engine failures in Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Chevrolet and Kyle Busch’s Toyota slowed the field on Lap 258.

Earnhardt’s calamity also was bad news for Greg Biffle, Travis Kvapil and Dave Blaney, who spun in the oil pouring from the No. 88 Chevy SS and wrecked, sidelining all three drivers.

Kenseth was the only driver who remained on the track under the ensuing yellow, and he surrendered the lead to Kahne seven laps after a restart on Lap 267. The decision to stay out cost Kenseth, who lost track position after pitting early on Lap 301, three laps before a caution for debris in Turn 1 interrupted a cycle of green-flag pit stops.

Jeff Gordon also lost a lap when the caution trapped him on pit road and was an innocent victim of three-wide racing after a spate of cautions to the race to a restart on Lap 325. Just past the star/finish line after the restart lap, contact between the cars of Mark Martin and Aric Almirola demolished those two machines as well as Gordon’s.

NASCAR red-flagged the race after Lap 326, and that proved disastrous to Kurt Busch, who Chevy lost power under the stoppage. Busch, who had wrested the lead from Kahne after a restart on Lap 319, surrendered the top spot to Harvick when his car wouldn’t start.

After a push from a safety truck, however, Busch’s car re-fired, and his crew changed the battery on pit road without losing a lap.

The fireworks were far from over. Jimmie Johnson’s spin on Lap 333 battered the No. 48 Chevy of the five-time champion, as well as the cars of Kenseth, Juan Pablo Montoya and Paul Menard.

That left Kahne and Harvick to fight for the lead, which Kahne took decisively on Lap 341, clearing Harvick to the outside through Turns 3 and 4. Kahne gave up the top with a green-flag pit stop on Lap 364, but regained it during the pit stop cycle before a debris caution on Lap 384 set up 11-lap dash to the finish.

Kyle Busch held off Kasey Kahne during a closing, 13-lap green-flag run to win Saturday’s History 300 Nationwide Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway and continue his wholesale revision of NASCAR’s record books.

Busch beat Kahne to the finish line by .939 seconds to claim a record seventh NNS victory at Charlotte, breaking a tie with Mark Martin for supremacy at the speedway. In winning for the sixth time in nine starts this season, Busch extended his record for all-time NNS wins to 57.

Busch led 186 of 200 laps, a personal best on a 1.5-mile speedway.

Before the race started, Busch mentioned that he’d like to break the tie with Martin, Clearly, the record was on his mind.

“Every time you’re tied with somebody, you want to beat ‘em,” Busch said after the race. “But when you’re tied with the greats in this sport, like the Mark Martins or the Jack Ingrams, it makes it pretty special to beat those guys and the records they set at different tracks, whatever’s been done before.

“It’s never easy, but I felt like we had a good car, and we were in good position. I told (crew chief) Adam (Stevens), ‘If this track gets hot, these guys are in trouble,’ because they seem to slide around a little more than we do. I felt like our car was really good, so I’m proud of the fact that what I felt actually came true today.”

Joey Logano ran third, followed by rookie Kyle Larson and Kevin Harvick. Trevor Bayne, Justin Allgaier, Matt Kenseth, Parker Kligerman and series leader Regan Smith completed the top 10.
Kahne got to the bumper of Busch’s No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota with eight laps left, but Busch adjusted his line and inched away.

“I got there and just didn’t get to his outside,” Kahne said. “I came close but didn’t get to him, and then he went to the top, and from that point I was a little bit on the tight side. I just wasn’t turning quite good enough…

“I couldn’t keep up. He kept good momentum on the top and was able to creep away a little bit. I thought we were close, and if he didn’t move up, I thought we would have had a really good shot.”

Busch, however, hadn’t run the top of the track all afternoon and wasn’t certain what would happen when he moved up.

“There towards the end, I did have to race hard with Kasey,” Busch said. “He was catching me a little bit on the outside think he was beating me down the straightaway, so I moved up to protect my momentum and do the same thing he was doing, and it seemed to help me. It seemed to allow me to drive away from him a little bit.

“I hadn’t been up there all day, so I was kind of worried about the fact that my car wouldn’t work up there, but it felt good, and it was certainly fast.”

Logano, who got the most out of his afternoon after an early flat tire, knows only too well how difficult it can be to beat Busch. Logano and Busch were teammates at JGR before Logano moved to Penske Racing this year.

“You have a great team there–guys I worked with for the last six years or so–so I know they’re a good team,” Logano said. “I know Kyle Busch is a good driver. Put all that together, and you’re going to have one heck of a deal trying to beat these guys. We’ve got to go back and work harder than them.”

With 50 laps left, Busch had a lead of 3.897 seconds over Sam Hornish Jr. immediately after a round of green-flag pit stops, but a caution on Lap 153 bunched the field for a restart on Lap 158.

Busch pulled away again, but caution flew again on Lap 165 when Travis Pastrana’s Ford spun off Turn 2 and plowed nose-first into the inside wall. Busch and Kahne were among eight drivers who stayed out under the yellow, but Harvick came to pit road for fresh tires, restarted 10th on Lap 173 and was up to fourth when Reed Sorenson’s spin caused caution No. 6 on Lap 178.

Despite the older rubber, Busch held the top spot after a restart with 17 laps left, but a collision between Michael Annett and Dakoda Armstrong on Lap 184 reset the field again, with Busch, Kahne, Harvick and Kligerman running first through fourth for a restart on Lap 188.

Notes: Smith added one point to his series lead over second-place Hornish, who finished 12th Saturday but led nine laps. The margin is 29 points… Annett finished 17th in his first race since the season opener at Daytona, where he was sidelined by an injury to his sternum… Busch recorded the 17th perfect driver rating of his NASCAR national series career. That was his second straight such performance, following a perfect 150-point rating May 10 at Darlington.