Toyota no longer just spinning its wheels

HAMPTON, Ga. -- The win mixed relief, redemption and joy for Kyle Busch.

He said after the Kobalt Tools 500 that all he could do was race and not worry about anything else.

On a sunny Georgia Sunday, on tires that slid maddeningly around the racetrack for most drivers, Busch broke through for Joe Gibbs Racing, Toyota Racing Development and himself.

His win at Atlanta Motor Speedway gave Toyota its first Sprint Cup victory and the first win by a foreign manufacturer since 1954, when Al Keller won in a Jaguar on a road course in Linden, N.J. He gave Joe Gibbs Racing its first win from him, becoming the youngest driver to win a Cup race in Atlanta and the only driver in NASCAR history to win a truck race and Cup race in the same weekend.

And finally, Busch, who was dismissed by Hendrick Motorsports at the end of last season, won a 2008 points race before any Hendrick driver.

How badly did he want to win his first race for his new team?

“Pretty badly, really,” Busch said. “. . . I knew that I wasn’t going to a team that didn’t have enough equipment or didn’t have good enough equipment to participate or to contend with Hendrick, because I’ve seen it.”

Tony Stewart, Busch’s JGR teammate, took second, and Dale Earnhardt Jr., the driver who replaced Busch at Hendrick, finished third.

For a while the race belonged to Earnhardt, who started from the outside pole and took the lead on the first lap. Earnhardt led by six seconds at one point, with Busch behind him, challenging him for much of that time.

Earnhardt led 62 of the 325 laps, mostly early in the race, but lost ground and grew frustrated with his car. At one point, he told his crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., that he was driving a 40th-place car.

Trouble controlling the tires left Earnhardt counting the laps until the race ended.

“We couldn’t run side by side, we’d wreck, you know,” Earnhardt said. “Every time you got beside a guy you were just like, ‘Take it.’ ”

Earnhardt said the blame shouldn’t solely rest with tire manufacturer Goodyear, but that Goodyear’s tire compound was a poor choice for this track. Stewart was more pointed with his remarks.

“That was the most pathetic racing tire that I’ve ever been on in my professional career,” Stewart said immediately after the race. “Goodyear can’t build a tire that is worth crap. If I were Goodyear I would be really embarrassed about this weekend and what they brought here. It didn’t keep us from winning the race, and how we got to second I don’t know.”

But all the slipping and sliding might have worked in Busch’s favor. He is used to putting his car in strange places and used to running it more loosely than other drivers are comfortable with.

“Everybody’s always said that I’ve been the aggressive driver, used to cause wrecks, used to be out of control,” Busch said. “. . . I don’t feel I’m driving any different than what I used to. I’ve sort of tamed my style, per se. Now it looks like I’m a professional at it.”

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Standings

1. Kyle Busch: 665

2. Greg Biffle: 592

3. Kevin Harvick: 574

4. Ryan Newman: 571

5. Jeff Burton: 555

6. Dale Earnhardt Jr.: 531

7. Kasey Kahne: 528

8. Tony Stewart: 525

9. Brian Vickers: 491

10. Kurt Busch: 478

11. Martin Truex Jr.: 471

12. Matt Kenseth: 470