Matt Kenseth knows he has a mountain to climb on Sunday if he is to wrest the Nextel Cup title away from Jimmie Johnson and he took the first few steps by winning the Busch Series race on Saturday.

Kenseth led nearly half of the 200 laps that comprised the Ford 300 for his fourth Busch win of the season to give his team boss Jack Roush a sweep of the first two races of the Homestead-Miami Speedway Championship weekend.

Homestead runner-up Carl Edwards managed to outscore championship winner Kevin Harvick for the first time in several weeks to keep the difference in points between the two to less than 850 as Harvick finished a disappointing (for him) sixth. Even though Harvick missed out on a record tying tenth Busch win of the year he still scored a remarkable 32 top 10 finishes in 36 races in one of the most dominating championship winning displays anywhere in the 21st century.

In the race itself Kenseth and Edwards were followed home by Paul Menard, Denny Hamlin, JJ Yeley and then Harvick with Dale Earnhardt Jr seventh and Kasey Kahne, Todd Kluever and Johnny Sauter completing the top ten.

Juan Montoya finished a respectable 14th in his final warm-up event before his Nextel Cup debut on Sunday but while Montoya had no problems in adapting to the variable banked 1.5-mile Homestead oval, his fellow open-wheel convert Sam Hornish Jr lasted less than five laps before he crashed out and was classified 43rd and last.