Busch wins again

FONTANA, Calif. It's Kyle Busch, again.

The 23-year-old NASCAR star was dominant on the 2- mile oval at Auto Club Speedway Saturday night, leading 144 of the 150 laps to race off with his seventh Nationwide Series victory of the season.

Busch easily held off Sprint Cup rival Carl Edwards on a pair of laterace restarts, piling up his record 18th NASCAR victory of the season, including eight in the Cup and three in the Craftsman Truck Series.

This one was one of the easiest of the season as Busch gave Joe Gibbs Racing its 15th Nationwide win of the year, including a victory in the February race here by teammate Tony Stewart, who led 136 of 150 laps. It was also the first win for the Gibbs Nationwide team since it was hit with seven suspensions, big fines and the loss of championship points for cheating on a chassis dyno engines test following the Nationwide race at Michigan.

"These guys got a bad rap a few weeks ago for what happened, but they don't deserve it," said Busch, who started from the pole. "This one means a lot. These guys have had a lot of adversity on them the past few weeks."

Busch said his No. 18 Toyota was "flawless, really amazing.

"I think the biggest challenge was just being good on the restarts and getting away," he added. "It's just fun to run like this."

Edwards, the defending Nationwide champion who is locked in a three-way points battle this season with leader Clint Bowyer and Brad Keselowski, finished second, followed by Brian Vickers, Jeff Burton, Jamie McMurray, rookie Joey Logano and Bowyer.

Keselowski had a long stop for repairs after his engine quit and wound up 33rd. That left him in second, 204 points behind Bowyer and 18 ahead of Edwards.

"It was a great points night for us," Edwards said. "Nobody was going to touch that (No.) 18. Those guys were scary fast. It was a lot of fun, but he was in a different zip code."

Busch and Edwards are 1-2 in the Cup points and have been the two hottest drivers in NASCAR's top series over the last few weeks, with Edwards winning three of the last four races and Busch finishing second to Edwards the last two weeks after winning the previous race.

Edwards bumped a dominating Busch out of the lead 30 laps from the end last week in the Cup race at Bristol, and the two then bumped each other on pit road, with NASCAR later putting both on probation for six races for the postrace incident.