Kyle Busch wins Nashville Nationwide

The 24-year-old led the most laps for the sixth week in a row but this time he managed to turn that performance into a victory.

Despite the hundreds of laps he had spent at the front, the Joe Gibbs Racing driver had only won one of the past five races, but this time even with Dover winner Brad Keselowski narrowing the gap to him as the race approached its end, Busch carefully managed his cushion to win for the first time at Nashville.

"What an awesome racecar," said Busch. "I owe all to my team. It's great to be able to come here and finally get this monkey off our back, whatever it's been. It's been a tough past couple of weeks for us.

"Keselowski was better than us at the end of the race but I was just trying to be conservative, not let anything happen again. At the concrete tracks they've always been fast."

As has been the tradition at Nashville, the winner received a specially-designed Gibson Les Paul guitar as the trophy, which Busch tried to break to pieces against the floor on Victory Lane in rock star style, leaving some astonished at his celebration antics.

Keselowski drove a steady race on his way to second place, beating Carl Edwards to the runner-up spot in the end. The JR Motorsports driver looked the only one capable of dealing with Busch all day long but he never got close enough to pose a serious threat to the leader.

"We did what we needed to do," said Keselowski. "We ran up front, put ourselves in position just like we did at Dover and just didn't catch the break that we caught there. But we're there; Kyle knew we were back there.

"We'll put a little bit of pressure on him and hopefully we'll force a mistake. We just need a little bit more to get up there, pass him and beat him."

Edwards had another quiet day on his way to third place, although he was happy with the progress his team made during the weekend. The Roush Fenway racer lost some ground to Busch in the championship battle and he is now 65 points off from the points leader.

"We've made some progress today but that #18 team, they've had some bad luck and we've capitalised on it," Edwards said. "But the fact is we've got to run better and tonight was the most competitively we've run for a long time."

Mike Bliss had another good day fishing fourth, while Jason Leffler rounded out the top five despite a malfunctioning power-steering, leading for 26 laps thanks to strategy moves that allowed him to be at the front of the field, although never for long before Busch would blow past.

The race saw few incidents with only four caution periods, although the last of them involved five cars, including the #16 Roush Fenway Ford driven by Ricky Stenhouse Jr, who ignited a chain reaction on lap 126. The race had to be red flagged for 13 minutes to clean the debris from the incident.

Pos  Driver                Car        Laps
 1.  Kyle Busch            Toyota     225
 2.  Brad Keselowski       Chevrolet  225
 3.  Carl Edwards          Ford       225
 4.  Mike Bliss            Chevrolet  225
 5.  Jason Leffler         Toyota     225
 6.  Stephen Leicht        Chevrolet  225
 7.  Steve Wallace         Chevrolet  225
 8.  Michael McDowell      Toyota     225
 9.  Erik Darnell          Ford       225
10.  Brad Coleman          Toyota     225
11.  Scott Lagasse Jr      Toyota     223
12.  Shelby Howard         Chevrolet  223
13.  Justin Allgaier       Dodge      223
14.  Bobby Hamilton Jr     Dodge      223
15.  Burney Lamar          Toyota     222
16.  Kenny Wallace         Chevrolet  221
17.  Morgan Shepherd       Chevrolet  221
18.  Danny O'Quinn Jr      Chevrolet  219
19.  Tony Raines           Chevrolet  219
20.  Brandon Whitt         Ford       218
21.  Robert Richardson Jr  Chevrolet  218
22.  Eric McClure          Ford       218
23.  Kevin Conway          Toyota     213
24.  Brendan Gaughan       Chevrolet  211
25.  Marc Davis            Toyota     182
26.  Jason Keller          Ford       170
27.  Michael Annett        Toyota     143
28.  Trevor Bayne          Toyota     128
29.  Sean Caisse           Chevrolet  127
30.  Brian Keselowski      Dodge      127
31.  Cale Gale             Chevrolet  123
32.  Ricky Stenhouse Jr    Ford       123
33.  Scott Wimmer          Chevrolet  79
34.  Kevin Lepage          Chevrolet  64
35.  Kertus Davis          Chevrolet  30
36.  Willie Allen          Dodge      16
37.  Kelly Bires           Chevrolet  9
38.  Johnny Chapman        Chevrolet  8
39.  Mike Harmon           Chevrolet  4
40.  Casey Atwood          Chevrolet  4
41.  Brad Baker            Ford       4
42.  John Wes Townley      Ford       2
43.  Mark Green            Chevrolet  1