Kyle Busch unstoppable at Sonoma

The 23-year-old has now won at every kind of track this year after scoring his maiden road course victory at Cup level with a perfectly executed and well-timed strategy along with superior pace that allowed him to run trouble-free through an eventful last part of the race.

"When we were here Friday, I though it was going to be a dismal weekend and I was trying to figure out what tyre barrier I was going to stick it in," Busch said. "But we worked on it, made changes to everything and finally figured it out."

"We came from 30th to 13th before the first caution and that was pretty good and then we caught the cautions at the right times. For Toyota to win here at their home race, that's pretty special, too."

Busch made massive progress during the first part of the race and pitted for the first time on lap 29, just before the first caution of the day came out. This allowed him to move up to third for the first restart as most drivers running in front of him had yet to pit and did so under the caution.

Greg Biffle was leading at the green flag but ran wide into turn one and went off on the inside of turn two into a cloud of dust, from which Busch came out leading the race after Juan Pablo Montoya - who was second - slowed down to avoid crashing into the Roush Fenway driver.

From then on the points leader set the pace at the front of the field followed by Montoya. The pair pitted for the last time under green just a lap before the second caution of the day came out on lap 71 after Robby Gordon stalled his car following an incident with Kurt Busch and Max Papis at turn two.

The order remained unchanged at the front but six laps later Busch's main threat suddenly vanished from his mirrors when Marcos Ambrose made an optimistic dive on the inside of third-placed Jamie McMurray into the hairpin, turning around Montoya's car and bringing out another caution.

Busch controlled the race from then on despite three more cautions and a red flag coming out within the last ten laps. With Montoya out of sight and other strong cars getting involved in incidents, there was nobody preventing 'Rowdy' from driving once again into victory lane.

David Gilliland scored a career-best second place behind him in the No. 38 Yates Racing Ford, picking up the pieces from a crash caused by Kevin Harvick spinning into Jamie McMurray and Tony Stewart on the entry to turn seven only four laps from the scheduled end of the race.

On the green-white-chequered finish Gilliland was able to successfully fend off Jeff Gordon, who managed to keep his nose clean to a third-place finish despite not having the pace to contend for victory at his home track.

"Obviously, I wanted to catch Kyle," said Gilliland about the last two laps which were run on a slippery track due to Scott Pruett's wrecked car pouring fluids on the surface after crashing into Martin Truex due to a push from behind by a charging Tony Stewart.

"But once I got up to turn four, I quit worrying about that and just basically focused on keeping my car on the race track. We went through there once and thought, 'Well, the next lap will probably be better because 40 cars have gone through there,' and the last lap it was every bit as slippery as the first lap going through there.

"It was everything I could do to keep my car on the race track at that point. Kyle was sliding around, and I was, Jeff was - so it was a handful."

Clint Bowyer also ran a conservative race to finish fourth ahead of Casey Mears who scored his best result of the season thus far, successfully fending off Montoya in the closing stages after the Colombian recovered from being 15th following his incident with Ambrose.

"You know, it's one of those deals where we were hoping for a little bit more," said Montoya after finishing sixth. "The team did a great job on the pit stops and we were competitive. We just got tangled up with the 21 (Ambrose) and it cost us a few spots."

Jimmie Johnson, who led from lap 5 to 31 and looked to have the pace to win, didn't get his strategy timed right and ended up finishing a disappointing 15th, the lowest finisher among the Hendrick drivers.

With the victory Kyle Busch has extended his lead in the championship to 103 points over Jeff Burton and has now another ten point bonus towards his Chase seeding.

Pos  Driver                Make       Laps
 1.  Kyle Busch            Toyota      112
 2.  David Gilliland       Ford        112
 3.  Jeff Gordon           Chevrolet   112
 4.  Clint Bowyer          Chevrolet   112
 5.  Casey Mears           Chevrolet   112
 6.  Juan Montoya          Dodge       112
 7.  Ryan Newman           Dodge       112
 8.  Matt Kenseth          Ford        112
 9.  Carl Edwards          Ford        112
10.  Tony Stewart          Toyota      112
11.  Greg Biffle           Ford        112
12.  Dale Earnhardt Jr     Chevrolet   112
13.  Jeff Burton           Chevrolet   112
14.  Brian Vickers         Toyota      112
15.  Jimmie Johnson        Chevrolet   112
16.  Martin Truex Jr       Chevrolet   112
17.  Terry Labonte         Dodge       112
18.  Jamie McMurray        Ford        112
19.  Elliott Sadler        Dodge       112
20.  Dave Blaney           Toyota      112
21.  Michael McDowell      Toyota      112
22.  Travis Kvapil         Ford        112
23.  Patrick Carpentier    Dodge       112
24.  David Ragan           Ford        112
25.  Michael Waltrip       Toyota      112
26.  Joe Nemechek          Chevrolet   112
27.  Denny Hamlin          Toyota      112
28.  Aric Almirola         Chevrolet   112
29.  Ron Fellows           Chevrolet   112
30.  Kevin Harvick         Chevrolet   112
31.  Sam Hornish Jr        Dodge       112
32.  Kurt Busch            Dodge       111
33.  Kasey Kahne           Dodge       111
34.  Paul Menard           Chevrolet   111
35.  Max Papis             Chevrolet   111
36.  Robby Gordon          Dodge       110
37.  AJ Allmendinger       Toyota      109
38.  Scott Pruett          Dodge       108
39.  Bobby Labonte         Dodge       103
40.  David Reutimann       Toyota       99
41.  Boris Said            Ford         94
42.  Marcos Ambrose        Ford         83
43.  Brian Simo            Ford         20