Sam Hornish Jr. drove an absolutely dominant car to victory Saturday afternoon, streaking away from Kyle Busch during a seven-lap dash to the finish in the Sam’s Town 300 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The win was Hornish’s second in NASCAR’s Nationwide Series and his first since Nov. 12, 2011 at Phoenix. It was the first Las Vegas victory for Penske Racing in any NASCAR series and the first Nationwide triumph for crew chief Greg Erwin, a winning Sprint Cup crew chief who signed on with Penske during the offseason.

The Penske organization also collected its first victory after switching from Dodge to Ford between seasons.

Busch rolled across the finish line in second, 1.1 seconds behind Hornish. Brian Vickers ran third, followed by Trevor Bayne and Elliott Sadler. Bayne recovered from an early brush with the wall to post the fourth-place result.

Hornish, who led 114 of the 200 laps, leads the series by 19 points over Sadler, Justin Allgaier (15th Saturday) and Brian Scott (ninth).

It wasn’t until race day that Hornish learned of the similarity between his name and that of the title sponsorship.

“I didn’t know until this morning that this was the Sam’s Town 300,” Hornish said. “It’s kind of cool that I was able to win it… It’s great to get Penske Racing’s first win back in a Ford.

“Man, the car was awesome today. It was a real joy to drive. I’ve got to thank all the guys on the Penske team for giving me an awesome car to race with. When you have a car that good, you’re always worried something bad is going to happen or you’ll get caught in somebody else’s problem. I’m glad that didn’t happen today.”

Busch, who had dominated at Phoenix a week earlier, had an excellent car on Saturday—but not quite strong enough.

“It was a tough race out there today all around,” Busch said. “Cars were really getting loose out there in the early stages of the race through the middle part of the race… The second-to-last run and the last run, I felt like our car was really good. There wasn’t much else that we could do to make it better.

“Sam was just that much faster than us. He was beating us a little bit everywhere, all the way around the race track. Certainly, when he stepped on the gas, that thing would go forward in a hurry. Us two were kind of the class of the field, but he was the class of everybody.”

Hornish dropped from the lead to third during pit stops on Lap 139, after NASCAR called a debris caution one lap earlier. Eight circuits after a restart on lap 145, Hornish regained the top spot, sailing past Busch and driving away.

Hornish led Busch by almost three seconds when Scott Lagasse Jr.’s spin in Turn 1 on Lap 182 caused the seventh caution of the race. The top seven cars stayed on track under the yellow while those behind them came to pit road for fresh rubber on Lap 184.

Four laps later, moments after Hornish led the field to the green flag, a hard wreck in Turn 2 involving rookie Kyle Larson, Joey Gase and Ryan Sieg slowed the race for the eighth time and left Larson’s No. 32 Chevrolet Camaro a smoking ruin.

Larson, whose car flew into the catch fence on the final lap of the NNS season opener at Daytona, hastily climbed from his car as safety workers arrived with fire extinguishers.

Bayne and Larson made track-position plays on Lap 83, taking fuel only under caution for Robert Richardson Jr.’s spin in Turn 2. Though they started at the front of the field, the strategy backfired, as both Bayne and Larson hit the outside wall battling for the lead on Lap 87.

Larson, in the outside lane, crowded Bayne on the bottom as the drivers raced side by side. Bayne’s No. 6 Ford broke loose, carrying both cars into the wall. Bayne remained on the lead lap, but Larson’s No. 32 Chevrolet was damaged more extensively, and the rookie lost two laps during repairs.

Not a pit road speeding penalty. Not a spate of cautions that kept bunching the field. Not Brad Keselowski, who in the past has found magic out front on old tires.

The prohibitive favorite in the Dollar General 200—after he won the pole in a laydown earlier in the day—Busch overcame a speeding penalty that dropped him to 22nd position for a restart on Lap 44.

That was a momentary setback. Working his way through traffic in short order, Busch passed Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Matt Kenseth for the lead on Lap 89. He lost the top spot briefly by pitting under caution on Lap 152, as Keselowski and three other drivers remained on the track, but Busch regained the lead on Lap 164, clearing Keselowski as the cars streaked into Turn 3.

Busch stayed out front the rest of the way. The victory was his first in the No. 54 Toyota and a record 52nd in the Nationwide Series.

“It’s great to be back, working with (crew chief) Adam (Stevens) and these guys,” said Busch, who was winless last year in the Nationwide Series driving for his own team. “It was a bummer deal not to be able to get a win at KBM (Kyle Busch Motorsports) last year, but (owner) Joe (Gibbs) putting me back in his operation and being back with the Joe Gibbs Racing side of things and Mark Cronquist engines, it’s a phenomenal day for us to get back to Victory Lane, to feel the taste of it again.

“I was almost nervous, feeling like it was my first win, although it’s win No. 52 in the series. It’s nice to be back.”

Keselowski held second by stretching his fuel to the end without pitting. Justin Allgaier ran third and leaves Phoenix tied for the series lead with Sam Hornish Jr., who came home seventh. Trevor Bayne and Elliott Sadler completed the top five.

Jimmie Johnson, using a rare Nationwide Series appearance to get some extra laps on a track that has befuddled him since its resurfacing in 2011, finished 12th.

Even though he tried a contrarian strategy, Keselowski knew that tactics alone wouldn’t be enough to overcome Busch’s advantage in speed.

“I knew I had a shot if something happened to Kyle, and we had to put ourselves in position for good things to happen,” Keselowski said. “But Kyle’s car was so fast. I probably could have had four tires and he could have had none, and it still wouldn’t have mattered. He’d still have drove through the field.

“When you have that much speed, you’re pretty much immune to strategy.”

Beginning his fifth full season of Nationwide racing, Allgaier is off to the best start of his career.

“The first five (races) kind of get you kicked off for the next 10 or 15,” Allgaier said. “This has been huge for us, for Turner Scott Motorsports. Our program has come a long way during the offseason. I’ll be the first to tell you that, at the end of the year last year, we were kind of scratching our heads. We knew we had a great organization. We just didn’t know what we were missing.

“Everybody at the team really buckled down … This is the strongest season start I’ve had. I hope we can keep that going and transfer it into a championship.”

The race wasn’t yet two laps old when Johanna Long drove hard into Turn 3 and tagged the back of the Ford of Hornish, the series leader entering the race.  With the front of her car damaged by the contact, Long slapped the wall exiting Turn 4, triggering a chain-reaction wreck that collected five other cars, including those of Hornish (who had fallen behind her) and Travis Pastrana.

“I don’t know; it just took off on me,” Long said of her contact with the wall. “I got in a little too hard, there (into) Hornish, felt bad, got under him. I got into the gas, and it just took off.

“I definitely didn’t want to finish like this. It’s really disheartening. I feel really bad. I don’t know what else to say.”

The aftermath of the wreck turned bizarre when the scoring transponder from Jamie Dick’s car (another victim of the accident) lodged in the nose of Hornish’s Ford. Though Hornish lost two laps on pit road while the transponder was removed, NASCAR restored the No. 12 to the lead lap because the extraction — to prevent Dick’s car from being scored improperly – was ordered by the sanctioning body.

Hornish’s travails weren’t quite over. After restarting sixth on Lap 109, Hornish spun in Turn 2 a lap later to bring out the fifth caution but remained on the lead lap. The nose and hood of his car heavily taped, Hornish salvaged the seventh-place finish.

Harvick passed Trevor Bayne on lap 37 to take the lead of Duel 1. He led the remaining 23 laps.

Danica Patrick, who will start the 500 from the pole, played it safe and dropped to the back early on to ensure her car would not sustain damage.

Greg Biffle, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jimmie Johnson, and Kurt Busch rounded out the top 5 of Duel 1.

The first duel was relatively uneventful until lap 52 when Denny Hamlin appeared to get loose and bumped Carl Edwards.  Edwards was turned into the wall triggering a multi-car accident that damaged the cars of Hamlin, Edwards, Trevor Bayne, and Regan Smith.

Kyle Busch used a fuel-only pit stop at lap 41 to take the lead coming off pit road. He ran most of the remaining laps with teammate Matt Kenseth behind him. But, with two laps to go, Kasey Kahne and Austin Dillon were able to pass Kenseth. They couldn’t mount a charge to pass Busch, though.

Busch said after the race that the original plan was to take two tires, but his crew chief made the call to go fuel-only.

Kahne, Dillon, Clint Bowyer, and Kenseth finished second through fifth, respectively.

Jeff Gordon, who will start the 500 on the front row, led the first 40 laps of Duel 2, before a pass-through penalty for speeding on pit road ended his chances of winning the duel.

Martin Truex Jr, who ran in the lead pack for most of Duel 2, was black-flagged for losing a side window. He finished 19th. Mike Bliss also had to make a pit stop to fix his window net, which came down. That cost him a chance at making the Daytona 500. Brian Keselowski was the only other driver who did not qualify for the race.

In 2013, Bayne will run another part-time Cup schedule with WBR, and a full-time Nationwide Series schedule with RFR.

Team owner Jack Roush says that the team still needs to work out the finances and sponsorship issues.

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Pastrana has already sold about half of the season in sponsorship, but rumor has it that RFR would run Pastrana regardless of sponsorship.

There has been no word on what companies are interested in sponsoring him, but Boost Mobile has sponsorship him in the Nationwide Series thus far. Red Bull has also sponsored him in other forms of motorsports.

Pastrana will join Trevor Bayne at RFR. Bayne will pilot an RFR Ford in the Nationwide Series as well.

Pastrana drove for RFR in the Richmond Nationwide Series race. He finished 17th.

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• Pastrana To Drive For RFR In Richmond N’Wide Race
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The victory was Stenhouse’s first of the season and third in the series — and his first on a 1.5-mile intermediate speedway, the staple of NASCAR’s top three touring series.

Points leader Elliott Sadler came home third, followed by Trevor Bayne and Las Vegas native Brendan Gaughan. Cole Whitt, Austin Dillon, Justin Allgaier, Sam Hornish Jr. and Kasey Kahne completed the top 10.

“To win on a mile-and-a-half (racetrack) is big for me,” Stenhouse said. “I feel like our cars are better than I am at some mile-and-a-halfs, and I feel like I drive really hard at the short tracks. I think we’ve got a really good package going now, and to get that win on a mile-and-a-half feels good.”

First out of the pits after a stop under caution on Lap 146, Stenhouse drove away from Martin after a restart on Lap 162, opening a lead of 4.785 seconds with 20 laps left. The defending Nationwide champion maintained a comfortable lead the rest of the way.

Even if he hadn’t won the race off pit road on Lap 146, Stenhouse felt he had the winning car.

“I definitely think we had the car to beat — I feel like we could have started sixth and still won that race there at the end,” Stenhouse said. “I found a line that I like to run, the car was coming around to it, (crew chief) Mike Kelley made some awesome pit calls there, and I just think we had the car to beat.”

Martin said the last green-flag run was no contest.

“That was one serious beat-down he put on me that last run,” Martin told the NASCAR Wire Service. “I mean just a beat-down. I kept up with him for a while and about wrecked five times, and that’s it. The run before that (when Martin was leading)? It was no problem. I could stay ahead of him, and any time he would close in on me, I could get up on the wheel and pull back out.

“But that last run, he seemed to be stronger. I didn’t feel my car was off. He just had that thing rolling. I’m not ashamed to say it wasn’t even close.”

Danica Patrick finished where she started, running 12th after qualifying 12th.

Fighting an extremely loose handling condition, Kyle Busch spun off Turn 2 and backed his No. 54 Toyota into the inside wall on Lap 26. Busch drove the car to the garage, where he lost 70 laps while his team made repairs.

In a Daytona 500 that featured the first postponement in its history, a ball of fire from a racecar vs. jet dryer collision under caution and a surfeit of wild action in the closing laps, Matt Kenseth won his second Daytona 500 when the tandem of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Greg Biffle couldn’t catch the race winner in a green-white-checkered-flag finish.

Earnhardt made a slingshot move around Greg Biffle to run second in the 54th running of the Great American Race at Daytona International Speedway. Biffle came home third, followed by Denny Hamlin and Jeff Burton, as a late caution necessitated two extra laps beyond the scheduled 200.

Paul Menard, Kevin Harvick, pole-sitter Carl Edwards, Joey Logano and Mark Martin completed the top 10.

Earnhardt hooked up with Biffle and pushed the No. 16 Ford after a restart on Lap 201, but the pair could not make headway against Kenseth who moved to the front of the field and stayed there.

Earnhardt expected Biffle to pull out and make a move, but the move never came.

“I was waiting and waiting,” Earnhardt said. “It looked like he might have been trying to make a move on the back straightaway, but nothing materialized there. Then we came off (Turn) 4, and I kind of waited till the last minute for him to have his opportunity to try to pass Matt, and nothing was happening, so I just pulled out and went around him.”

Kenseth had plenty of power at the finish, despite problems with the cooling system that plagued him early in the race.

“We had a lot of problems — it was spewing water,” said Kenseth, who notched the 22nd NASCAR Sprint Cup victory of his career. “I have to give a lot of credit to (engine builder) Doug Yates and the guys at the engine shop. We had great horsepower.

“I could get a pretty good start on the bottom and either Denny or Dale Jr. could push me for a while and then they just couldn’t stay attached and I would get away from them just in time to get in front of Greg, and the two of us together could make some unbelievable speed. I have to thank Greg. We worked together really good all day long. He had a really fast car all day as well.”

A multicar wreck on Lap 188 thinned the herd considerably, taking out a handful of competitive cars. Jamie McMurray spun wildly near the entrance to Turn 1, and the chain-reaction collision wiped out the cars of Brad Keselowski, Kasey Kahne and Aric Almirola and damaged the machines of Edwards and Tony Stewart.

Another melee on Lap 196 set up the overtime. After contact from Joey Logano’s Toyota, the Ford of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. caromed into Stewart’s Chevrolet, turning the defending Cup champion sideways and igniting a pinball-style wreck that also involved Kyle Busch and Ryan Newman.

A strange weekend that saw the first weather postponement in the history of the Daytona 500 got downright bizarre during a round of pit stops under caution late in the race.

Juan Pablo Montoya brought his No. 42 Chevrolet to pit road under caution on Lap 160, complaining of transmission issues. His car fell victim to a strong vibration when he returned to the track, and Montoya slid out of control at the entrance to Turn 3 and slammed into a jet dryer, which was against the outside wall, blowing the track.

The collision ignited the jet fuel in the dryer and set both vehicles ablaze. Montoya and the driver of the service vehicle both escaped the wreckage, but the latter — Duane Barnes, from Michigan International Speedway — was taken to nearby Halifax Medical Center for further evaluation.

“Something failed in the rear of the car, and the car just spun into the jet dryer,” Montoya said after a visit to the care center. “I left the pits and felt a really weird vibration, and I came back in and checked the rear end and (they) said it was OK, and I got into the backstraight and we were going in fourth gear but wasn’t going that fast.

“Every time I got on the gas, I could feel the rear squeezing. When I was telling the spotter to have a look how the rear was moving, the car just turned right.”

NASCAR red-flagged the race as safety vehicles arrived on the scene and track workers attempted to put out the fire.

“There’s going to be a big speed bump heading into Turn 3,” crew chief Steve Letarte told Dale Earnhardt Jr., fearful that the blaze would melt the asphalt. “I will be shocked — shocked — if we can get this race restarted.”

Letarte was wrong.

Safety workers cleared the scene by hoisting the remains of the jet dryer on a tow truck with a boom to prevent further damage to the asphalt. After a stoppage of two hours, five minutes and 29 seconds, the event resumed just before midnight ET.

The race was barely one lap old when contact from the front bumper of Elliott Sadler’s Chevrolet turned the No. 48 Chevy of five-time champion Jimmie Johnson hard into the outside wall near the exit from the tri-oval.

Unable to avoid the wreck, David Ragan plowed into the side of Johnson’s car. Neither Johnson nor Ragan was able to continue; they retired from the race in the 42nd and 43rd positions, respectively.

The cars of defending race winner Trevor Bayne, Danica Patrick and Kurt Busch were severely damaged in the melee and all three headed to the garage for extensive repairs and later returned to the track.

“The steering’s off,” Patrick said, as she brought the No. 10 Chevy to pit road. Her crew repaired the rear suspension, but Patrick was 62 laps down when she reappeared on Lap 66. She wound up 38th in her Sprint Cup debut.

Notes: Martin Truex Jr. won the $200,000 bonus for leading the race at the halfway point . . . The top four drivers when Juan Montoya hit the jet dryer were Dave Blaney, Landon Cassill, Tony Raines and David Gilliland, none of whom had come to pit road with the rest of the lead-lap cars. Irreparable damage to the track or an ill-timed rain cell could have made a winner of Blaney. . . . Edwards and Kyle Busch had to restart from the rear when the race resumed for removing tear-offs from their windshields under the red flag.

Buescher, a first-time winner in the series, took advantage of a last-lap wreck involving front-runners Trevor Bayne, Tony Stewart, Elliott Sadler, Joey Logano, Kurt Busch, Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and Kyle Busch to score the victory, one day after rookie John King won his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race in his first trip to Daytona.

Brad Keselowski dodged the wreck to finish second, with Elliott Sadler coming home third. Rookies Cole Whitt and Austin Dillon ran fourth and fifth, respectively.

Buescher survived damage from a late-race crash to secure the win. It was a case of right place, right time.

“I got caught up in one of those late-race wrecks, but it’s not over — we’re still in it,” Buescher said of his attitude approaching a restart with two laps left in the 120-lap race. “There wasn’t a lot of damage on the car.”

Compounding Buescher’s problem was the loss of his most effective drafting partners — Justin Allgaier and Joe Nemechek — in earlier crashes.

“We lost all of our track position,” Buescher said. “I had to get back through there using everybody else’s draft, but (with) no drafting partner . . .

“It’s incredible. This is top of the list for any racecar driver to win at — and we did it today.”

A race that had been peppered with minor incidents produced a huge one on Lap 104, when the front of the field accordioned in Turn 4, and cars began checking up and wrecking mid-pack. All told, 20 cars were involved in the crash, including the machines of Denny Hamlin, Kenny Wallace and Allgaier.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. ducked to the bottom of the track to avoid the wreck and sustained minor damage to the right side of his Chevrolet. After a four-minute stoppage to pry the splitter from Wallace’s wrecked car from the Turn 4 wall, Earnhardt restarted 14th on Lap 113.

But Earnhardt fell victim to a 14-car pileup one lap later when contact from David Ragan’s Ford turned Sam Hornish’s Dodge to trigger the multicar wreck.

Pole-sitter Danica Patrick exited the race on Lap 49, after a hard tap from Cole Whitt, her teammate at JR Motorsports, knocked Patrick’s No. 7 Chevrolet out of control and into the Turn 3 wall.

Patrick’s team pushed the car to the garage for extensive repairs, losing 48 laps in the process. She returned to the track on Lap 98 and finished 38th, an inauspicious start to a championship campaign.

Bayne said:

I’m excited. It’s a big deal for me. It’s what I had hoped for. We’re all excited to be back together.

Team co-owner Eddie Wood added:

It’s taken a long time to get to this announcement, but it’s good to be back together. We all wanted to do what was best for Ford Motor Company and its young drivers, and to be sure everybody had a place to race.

Ford Customer Service Division and its brands Motorcraft and Quick Lane will sponsor the team.

Update: According to Jayski.com, Ford will sponsor the car for 12 races in 2012, which means that Bayne should drive at least 12 races next season.

Bayne powered past Roush Fenway teammate Carl Edwards after a restart on Lap 194 of 200 and held off hard-charging Denny Hamlin for the victory in Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Challenge Nationwide Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.

Bayne crossed the finish line .142 seconds ahead of Hamlin, who started from the rear of the field after Kyle Busch, scheduled to drive the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota, was parked for the weekend for wrecking Ron Hornaday Jr. in Friday night’s truck series race.

Edwards, who dominated the event until the final caution flew on Lap 189, after Jason Leffler scraped the Turn 4 wall, came home third, followed by Clint Bowyer and Brad Keselowski.

Coincidentally, Texas was the track where Bayne first started feeling sick in April from what was assumed to have been an insect or tick bite. Illness sidelined the 20-year-old driver for approximately six weeks, and during that time he underwent extensive tests for what he believes was Lyme disease.

For Bayne, 2011 has been a year of extreme highs and lows—from the Daytona 500 win to the illness to intense criticism two weeks ago at Talladega for breaking a promise to drafting partner Jeff Gordon to Saturday’s maiden win in the Nationwide Series.

“I don’t know if you could script a story like the year I’ve had,” Bayne said. “It’s crazy to think only one year ago I was making my first Cup start (at Texas). To come back to Texas and get our first Nationwide win, this is a place I’m going to love from now on.”

Series leader Ricky Stenhouse Jr. finished sixth and expanded his margin to 17 points over polesitter Elliott Sadler, who finished ninth.

Bayne pushed Edwards out front on the Lap 194 restart, then ducked inside his teammate and fought for the lead. One lap later, he secured the top position and held it the rest of the way, as Hamlin passed Edwards for second in the closing laps.

“Going into the last restart, I knew that our car was going to be really strong for a short run,” Bayne said. “We were able to push Carl out front, and once he got out front, we actually cleared the 18 (Hamlin). Had I not cleared the 18, I don’t know if we could have won the race, but fortunately we had enough power to get by him and get to the bottom and get on Carl’s left rear a little bit and get by him.

“These are the kinds of (races) you’ve always wanted to win as a driver. That’s the driver I want everybody to know that I can be, the guy that can get it done at the end, and I’m glad that we were finally able to do that.”

Notes: Danica Patrick ran 11th in her first Nationwide start since Oct. 8 at Kansas. … Kenny Wallace finished 13th in his series-record 520th start. … Bayne’s victory enabled Ford to clinch the Nationwide Series manufacturers’ championship. … The win was the 299th for Roush Fenway Racing in NASCAR’s top three series combined. … Bayne tied the record for least laps led by a Texas winner—six. … Edwards led 157 laps, the second-most laps he has led in a Nationwide race he didn’t win. He led 160 laps two months ago at Richmond, finishing second to Busch.