Sam Hornish Jr. put on a dominating performance at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Saturday en route to the win in the Sam's Town 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series race, his second career win.
"Dreams are made of cars like this," Hornish said in victory lane of his dominant race car.
The victory allowed Hornish to regain sole possession of the series championship points lead. He and Justin Allgaier headed into the weekend in a tie atop the standings. Allgaier finished the race 15th.
Hornish was able to hold off the series' all-time winningest driver and Las Vegas native Kyle Busch for the win, leaving Busch still winless in Nationwide competition at his home track. Busch finished second.
"It stinks, man," Busch said. "Fought real hard all day. Had a great piece, just wasn't fast enough."
Brian Vickers finished third, Trevor Bayne was fourth and Elliott Sadler rounded out the top-five.
"We're definitely getting better," Sadler said of his new team and crew chief Chris Carrier.
Vickers started on the pole due to a cancellation of qualifying and the starting grid being set by 2012 owner points. He led most of the early laps of the race until Brad Keselowski took the lead on lap 24.
Bayne claimed the lead by staying out on the race track when NASCAR waved a competition caution on lap 35. But after staying out during that caution, Bayne was forced to give up the lead to head down pit road when the next yellow flag waved just before lap 60.
Hornish's dominance began when the race restarted when he drove from third to the lead when the race went back to green.
Bayne moved back into the lead, though, again using pit strategy when he took fuel only during a caution on lap 81. Kyle Larson used the same strategy to restart second. The two made contact racing for the lead when the race went back to green, giving up the top spots and bringing out another caution.
Vickers and Austin Dillon restarted the race first and second, but by lap 94, Hornish was back up front and pulling away.
The yellow flag waved again on lap 139. During that caution, Hornish lost a couple of positions to Busch and Vickers as he spent a little extra time for fuel on pit road. After Busch and Vickers raced for the lead for several laps, Hornish took second from Vickers with 49 laps to go and then moved by Busch for the lead a couple of laps later.
Hornish remained up front the rest of the way, holding Busch off on two additional restarts.
"The guys at Penske Racing gave me a great race car," Hornish said. "It was great on restarts."
Finishing sixth through 10th were Dillon, Regan Smith, Alex Bowman, Brian Scott and Travis Pastrana.
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