Kurt Busch wins 2015 Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond International Raceway

Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick gave Stewart-Haas Racing a 1-2 finish in Sunday’s rain-delayed Toyota Owners 400 at Richmond International Raceway.

A series of late cautions made things interesting, but Busch, who led 293 of a possible 400 laps, was never seriously challenged. On each restart he got the jump and quickly separated himself from the field outrunning Harvick. The win was Busch’s first of the season, snapping a 35-race winless streak.

“It’s an incredible feeling,” Busch said. “It’s a total team effort.”

Harvick’s runner-up was his seventh top-two finish in nine races this season. His car was one of the few that could keep pace with Busch, but Harvick said a bad set of tires cost him valuable track position midrace.

Jimmie Johnson, Jamie McMurray and pole-sitter Joey Logano completed the top-five finishers.

“What we really needed was just all the tires to be the same,” Harvick said. “We put that one set of tires on and went back to 12th or 13th and wound up making up the spots, but it just got us way behind.”

Kasey Kahne, Matt Kenseth, Jeff Gordon, Clint Bowyer and Martin Truex Jr. finished sixth through 10th, respectively.

Busch missed the first three races of 2015 after NASCAR suspended him following allegations he committed domestic abuse against an ex-girlfriend last fall. When the Delaware Attorney General declined to press charges, NASCAR reinstated Busch the next week.

“I have this opportunity because of (SHR co-owner) Gene Haas and everybody that’s part of our family at Stewart-Haas. It’s an unbelievable feeling when you pull deep from within and you go through troubles and you know, when you’re accused of something and things go sideways, your personal life doesn’t need to affect your business life. And I’m here in Victory Lane.”

Eight cautions slowed the race for 53 laps. The most noticeable incident came when Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart made contact with 40 laps to go sending Stewart spinning into the inside Turn 1 wall. Each faulted the other for the accident. Earnhardt finished 14th, Stewart 41st.

Chase Elliott, making his second career Sprint Cup start, finished 16th.

Sunday’s race was originally scheduled for Saturday evening, but rain forced NASCAR to postpone the event a day. The change from a night race to one held in the afternoon confounded many expected contenders, including Denny Hamlin, a two-time Richmond winner who started second but faded to finish 22nd.