The weekend at Dover International Speedway belonged to Kyle Busch as he wrapped it up with a win in Sunday’s Autism Speaks 400!

photo credit: Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images for NASCAR

Busch took the lead for the first time on lap 59 and would go to lead a total of 141 laps.

“We fought through the beginning part of the race and through the middle part of the race just being too loose,” Busch said. “About lap 260 we finally got it together and got enough rear grip in the car where we started working on some speed and tried to get that going on the beginning part of the runs, and it worked for us.”

“We had things fall our way today, and fortunately we had a great race car that we unloaded with off the track, and that’s a testament to Dave Rogers (crew chief) and his team and what all they’ve done over the off-season and through the past few weeks to prepare ourselves for where we’re at today. Really good work by everybody.”

Jimmie Johnson led a race-high 225 of 400 laps, but couldn’t get back in contention to win after a pit road penalty. With 36 laps remaining, Johnson was caught speeding on pit road. He was forced to make a pass-through penalty which trapped him a lap down. Johnson finished 16th, one lap down.

“I ran my guts out trying to pass him (Kyle Busch),” Johnson said. “It’s unfortunate we didn’t have a chance there at the end.”

“Unfortunately for those guys,” Busch said. “They got busted for speeding and we weren’t able to beat them outright and race them around the end of the race. I’m going on a limb to say we could beat them today with or without the penalty.”

It was win #18 for the driver of the #18 as well as the second win for him this season and second at Dover. Busch won the Nationwide Series race the day before and dominated Friday night’s Camping World Truck Series race, but failed to win after running out of gas on the final restart.

“You know, it is what it is,” Busch said. “It’s not going to hurt my feelings too bad to go home Monday or to go to bed tonight knowing that I lost Friday. I’m going to think more about today and what this Sprint Cup Championship means more than what winning in one of my trucks does.”

Busch moved up to 2nd in the series standings, 69 points behind leader Kevin Harvick.

“It was a good run,” runner-up Jeff Burton said. “I thought we were about even with the 18, a little better, and then he seemed to get a little better there late in the race. We had a good run, and we just need to keep knocking on the door. We’ll get us some.”

After starting 21st, Matt Kenseth made it towards the front midway and led once for 15 laps.

“It was a struggle,” Kenseth said. “We had to work hard to get where we were at. We made really good adjustments in the pits, really good pit calls to get the track position we needed. So track position was really, really important today, and glad the race finished under green and we were able to get that long run in there and green flag pit stops and all of that stuff. It was fun to race that way and have a race end that way in my opinion. Overall it was a great day for us, we just worked all day and got the best we could out of it then.” Kenseth finished 3rd.

Busch’s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate and last week’s race winner, Denny Hamlin finished 4th followed by David Reutimann, Greg Biffle, Kevin Harvick, Carl Edwards, Tony Stewart and Joey Logano rounded out the top-10.

For the (unofficial) race results, click here (nascar.com)

There were 5 cautions for 24 laps and 20 lead changes among 8 drivers: M. Truex Jr. 0; K. Kahne 1-24; J. Johnson 25-58; Kyle Busch 59-83; J. Johnson 84-133; Kurt Busch 134; J. Burton 135; J. Johnson 136-169; Kyle Busch 170-176; J. Johnson 177-232; Kyle Busch 233-234; J. Johnson 235-245; M. Kenseth 246-260; J. Johnson 261-291; Kyle Busch 292-352; J. Johnson 353-354; Kyle Busch 355; J. Johnson 356-362; D. Reutimann 363; M. Truex Jr. 364-365; Kyle Busch 366-400