After what he might call a couple of frustrating weeks, Kyle Busch can take a deep breath. He won one Saturday night at Gateway International Speedway! Busch has three wins and 4 runner-up finishes in the last 7 Nationwide races. We know Busch doesn’t like to settle for anything but victory lane.

Photo Credit: Jamie Squire/Getty Images for NASCAR

From a 9th place starting position, it didn’t take him long to move through the field. Busch rode around in the top 3 throughout much of the race. The victory is his 27th in the series tying him for 4th on the all-time series win list with Jeff Burton. It was his 6th win this season and 16th top-10 finish.

“It was good, hard-fought race,” Busch said. “It was a real battle there with Kevin Harvick. He had a real good car tonight. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to race him there at the end. He ran out and had to come to pit road.”

Harvick led the race-high 105 laps. He challenged the polesitter Brad Keselowski from the drop of the green flag and was strong all night. On lap 171, Harvick had a considerable lead over Busch until he ran out of gas. He lost 3 laps as he coasted to pit road and had a tough time getting his car restarted. Harvick finished 17th.

“That was a bummer for him,” Busch said. “But we had a little bit better car at that point in the race.”

The Sprint Cup Series enjoyed just 1 of their 4 off-weekends on their current schedule. Only 4 Cup regulars were entered in Saturday’s Nationwide Series event at Gateway and that included Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards, who are running full-time in the series and are 1-2 in the series standings. With slightly less than 50 laps to go, they were running 1-2 on the track. One could think that the race might have come down between the 2 of them.

“We gave it all we had, all night,” Carl Edwards said. “We were just a little off. We just weren’t quite good enough.” Edwards has two wins @ Gateway. In the past 4 races, it has either been Edwards or Reed Sorenson taking the checkers. Edwards is the defending race winner. He won last year and in ’06. Sorenson won in ’05 and ’07. Sorenson finished 2nd.

Mike Bliss finished 4th followed by Brad Coleman, Stephen Leicht, Michael Annett, Brad Keselowski, Jason Keller and Erik Darnell – rounding out the top 10.

For the (unofficial) race results, click here.

There were 7 caution flags for 34 laps. The first caution flag didn’t fly until lap 68, the longest green flag run in the track’s history of hosting Nationwide series events.

Brad Keselowski started from the pole. Odds might’ve been stacked up against him from the start as stats say in 12 previous races @ Gateway, there’s only been one pole-winner. Martin Truex Jr won from the pole in 2004. Keselowski led the first lap and finished 8th.

There were 10 lead changes among 4 drivers: Brad Keselowski 1; K. Harvick 2-57; K. Busch 58-61; C. Edwards 62-64; K. Busch 65-93; K. Harvick 94; K. Busch 95-105; C. Edwards 106; K. Busch 107-123; K. Harvick 124-171; K. Busch 172-200.