Kyle Busch drove through the dust left by many of the pre race favourites to take his fifth win of the 2008 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and his first victory on a road course thanks to a commanding performance in Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at the Infineon Raceway.
Starting 30th the current championship leader was discounted by the majority of pundits from to the start of the 110-lap race, which ran to 112 laps after a green-white-chequered flag finish but after gambling on an early race green flag stop for fuel Busch was able to move to the front and stay there for the final 76 laps as everyone else around him lost their heads.
With overtaking proving as tough as ever with the new generation chassis around the sinuous, undulated 1.99-mile California road course Busch was able to keep a safe gap of between three and four seconds back to his closest rivals during the relatively caution free opening 100 laps and then timed each restart to perfection during an incident filled final 12 laps.
Polesitter Kasey Kahne led the opening few exchanges as the majority of the 43 car starting field displayed a surprising amount of courtesy to one another but the extended opening green flag run quickly highlighted the deficiencies with several cars, notably Kahne's #9 Gillett-Evernham Dodge, and he soon started to slip back.
Second place starter Jimmie Johnson was the first to jump ahead of Kahne and opened a six second lead as the race passed the 20-lap mark but as soon as Carl Edwards, up from 12th on the grid, battled his way past a group comprising Kurt Busch, Robby Gordon and Cup Series debutant Marcos Ambrose Johnson's advantage began to dwindle.
As several cars, including eventual winner Busch, David Gilliland, Greg Biffle, defending Infineon winner Juan Montoya, Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick chose to pit under green and just as it looked like Edwards was sizing up Johnson for a pass for the lead, Joe Nemechek's collision with David Ragan at the final hairpin brought out the yellow flags on lap 29.
The leaders had no choice but to pit, with those who had made their stops under green cycling through to the front of the pack for the restart. Johnson ad Edwards' battle for the lead had suddenly become the battle for eleventh. Biffle now led from Montoya, Busch, Jamie McMurray and Jeff Burton but when the green flag waved Biffle overcooked it badly going into turn two and spun.
Startled by the leader spinning in front of him Montoya instinctively hit the brakes, which allowed the opportunistic Busch to nip through and grab the lead. Little did anyone realise at the time, the battle for the race victory ended there and then.
With no caution flag waved Busch soon settled into a rhythm, running two to three seconds ahead of Montoya who in turn had McMurray and the rest hot on his heels. As the race passed the half way point most of the attention was on Robby Gordon and the hugely impressive Ambrose as they both charged up the leaderboard after getting shuffled back during the pitstops.
