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Busch cruises to monster win at Dover

Jun 2, 2008 - 12:05 AM DOVER, Delaware (Ticker) -- Kyle Busch added a win at the "Monster Mile" to his monster season.

The series points leader claimed his fourth win of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season Sunday, cruising to a dominant win at the Best Buy 400 at Dover International Speedway.

It was Busch's third win in the last five Sprint Cup races. It was also the fifth straight top-three finish for Busch, who hasn't finished outside of the top 10 in any of the last seven races.

In a Toyota, Busch took the checkered flag nearly six seconds ahead of Carl Edwards. Edwards' Roush Fenway Racing teammates Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth brought their Fords home third and fourth, respectively.

Jeff Gordon rounded out the top five in a Chevrolet.

"(Crew chief) Steve Addington and these guys on pit road did a phenomenal job," said Busch, who also has won at Atlanta, Talladega and Darlington. "I'm just proud to be here (in Victory Lane). We had a third-place car today."

"I think Kyle is being modest," Edwards said. "That last run I believe his car was the best car. I think over the day, I believe our car was the best on average, but we just didn't put it all together. We weren't fast enough at the end."

With the win, Busch increased his lead in the standing to 142 points over Jeff Burton, who finished eighth in a Chevrolet.

Busch, 23, took the lead for good on lap 326 of 400 and took off, opening a large lead over Edwards and putting the majority of the field a lap down.

"I was just riding, taking care of it and running 90 percent, trying not to do anything stupid," Busch said.

Only six cars finished on the lead lap.

"Second place ... it's a forced smile on my face right now ... terrible," Edwards said. "I felt that I had a car that could beat the 18 (Busch) all day. We were better - we just finished second."

An early race crash took out a number of top competitors just 17 laps in. Elliott Sadler came down in front of David Gilliland, sending his Dodge into the wall while collecting nine other cars.

Tony Stewart, Clint Bowyer, Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and last week's winner Kasey Kahne were all involved.

Hamlin, who won Saturday's Nationwide Series race, did not return and finished last, dropping from fourth to ninth in the standings. Stewart made his way back to the track and wound up 41st.

Earnhardt finished 35th but still remained third in points, 271 behind Busch.

"There was a big wreck and we got in it," Earnhardt said. "I couldn't tell what happened, but Elliott told me the 38 got in the back of him. It was just a miserable day at Dover and long. We stayed third in points, but there ain't much you can do except keep going."

Kahne, who was coming off wins in the Sprint All-Star Challenge and the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe's Motor Speedway, retained the 12th spot in the standings despite running 31st.

Biffle started from the pole and led all but one of the first 100 laps, but his car began sputtering and he dropped off the pace.

"We were pretty good - I don't know what happened but the engine started missing there early in the race and the battery was going dead, so we switched batteries and it came back on line," said Biffle, who jumped from 11th to fifth in the standings. "But we had to shut everything off and we were just a little bit too tight all day."