Kyle Busch coasts home

This time, the crash happened behind Kyle Busch. Instead of leaving Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway with a smashed-up car, he drove into victory lane.

The kid who couldn't conquer Talladega finally won at the harrowing track yesterday, and in this breakout season for Busch, it was only fitting that he coasted to the win.

Busch came back from a lap down in the Aaron's 499 for his first win at Talladega, which was won under caution when a 12-car accident brought out the yellow flag on the final lap. It froze the field and allowed Busch to slowly make his way across the finish line - a rare completion considering his past history at this track.

In six previous top-series races, Busch failed to finish four times and wrecked out of both events last season. His accident in last spring's Cup race was so hard, he cracked his head-and-neck restraint and finished 37th. And his wreck in the fall officially ended his championship hopes.

"I don't think I've finished one here without wrecking, or at least without a torn-up car," Busch said.

But this year, he can't seem to do anything wrong. His victory was his second Sprint Cup win of the year, seventh spanning NASCAR's three top series, and gave him wins four weekends in a row dating to a Nationwide Series victory in Texas this month.

He has scored wins this season on a road course, an intermediate track, a short track and a super speedway.

It has made for an incredible start to the season for Busch, who was fired from Hendrick Motorsports last year despite his outstanding talent because the team couldn't tolerate his often irrational temperament.

So Joe Gibbs Racing snatched him up. Busch, who turns 23 next week, has given the organization assurance it has a strong future even if two-time NASCAR champion Tony Stewart opts to leave the team when his contract expires.

Although this hot start has solidified the decision to sign him, team president J.D. Gibbs said the team knew it had a superstar on its hands after watching him pace last October's test at Atlanta in his very first time working with JGR and crew chief Steve Addington.

"The first time we got a glimpse of it was that test at Atlanta in the fall. We realized we had something very special," Gibbs said.

This season is so perfect, it didn't even matter that Busch fell a lap down midway through the race when he missed his pit during a stop and had to circle back to try again on the next lap. But he got the lap back as the "lucky dog" on the next caution, and it put him in position to drive back to the front in his Toyota.

Juan Pablo Montoya finished second to match his career best on an oval since moving to NASCAR midway through 2006. He also was second at Indianapolis in July.

"I didn't want to finish second," Montoya said. "It's hard. I would think I would have tried to make a move coming out of [Turn] 4."

Denny Hamlin, Busch's JGR teammate, finished third.

"The whole race was crazy," Hamlin said. "Everyone got antsy."

That showed in the waning laps, which were marked by three accidents. The first came with 14 laps to go when Tony Stewart, the third Joe Gibbs Racing driver, was stuck in the middle of a huge pack of cars. Bobby Labonte got forced to the bottom of the track by another car, and it set in motion a six-car accident that ended Stewart's day.

Despite leading a race-high 61 laps, he dropped to 0-for-20 in Cup races at Talladega.

Labonte wrecked again shortly after the restart for another caution, setting up a final restart with five laps to go and Michael Waltrip leading.

But Jimmie Johnson moved Waltrip out of the way, briefly giving Johnson the lead before he lost his momentum and a Busch-led train raced past him on the outside. Busch had Jeff Gordon on his bumper, and the ending was shaping up for another last-lap duel: Four of the past six Talladega races ended with a last-lap pass.

Montoya, with a huge push from temporary teammate David Stremme - he was filling in for Dario Franchitti, who broke his ankle in Saturday's Nationwide Series race - moved past Gordon and right to Busch's bumper with Hamlin behind him.

Knowing Hamlin was likely to work with Busch if he couldn't win the race himself, Montoya bided his time as he considered how to make a run on Busch. But it never came into play, as Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jamie McMurray made contact, McMurray hit the wall and other cars piled up around them.

• IndyCar // There was no magic for Danica Patrick this time, with Dan Wheldon holding off Tony Kanaan to win his second straight race at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, Kan. Patrick, who last week became the first woman to win an IndyCar race, never got into contention in the RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300 and wound up on the sideline with a broken wheel hub. It was the 14th career victory for Wheldon and first since winning on the 1.5-mile Kansas track a year ago.

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