Quotes & Notes: Las Vegas

Engine was the word of the weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It started on Friday and Saturday when five Toyotas changed their motors and started the race from the rear of the field.

But on Sunday, it was Ford and Chevrolet who suffered. Matt Kenseth saw his three-peat go up in smoke on Lap 6; David Ragan, Kenseth's teammate, soon followed with a smoky departure; Mark Martin lost an engine for the second week in a row; Todd Bodine's motor lasted half the race and Carl Edwards made it until the final lap, when his engine finally expired.

Las Vegas native Kyle Busch, the first to lose an engine on Friday, started the race 37th and worked his way to the front, surviving 14 cautions and winning on his home track for the first time.

"This is pretty cool. I didn't know exactly what it would mean. It's awesome man, this is just the feeling of a lifetime."
-- Kyle Busch, on winning at his hometown track

"Sometimes you just have to scratch and claw and kick, spit and fight for a win. That's what this whole race team did, along with Kyle [Busch] today.
-- Steve Addington, crew chief for the No. 18, on their come-from-the-back win

"People say, 'Well, it's a fluke,' or 'They've lucked out.' But we started about last and we came up through there up into the top 10 and had an oil leak and went back to about 25th or so and drove up through there and ended up getting a top-five finish -- it doesn't get any better than that."
-- David Reutimann, on his career-best fourth-place finish

Final Turn

Jeff Gordon is leading in points, but his teammates -- Jimmie Johnson, Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt Jr. -- have all started the season with a thud. Is it time to panic at Hendrick?

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"He just passed us. He didn't like make some magic move."
-- Clint Bowyer, on Busch's pass for the win

"There were some bad calls that ended up hurting us. We selected our pit stall on the other side of the start/finish line so that if the caution came out we wouldn't be held on the lead lap. I think NASCAR missed that call. And then they should have thrown the red well before and let these laps wind down at the end of the race today, in my opinion."
-- Jimmie Johnson, on how he went from the best car to 24th

"I hate it. I sure would have liked to kept racing today."
-- Mark Martin, on his second consecutive DNF for engine problems

"You don't normally look at points unless you're in 35th."
-- Dale Earnhardt Jr., on point racing so early in the season.

"Hell of a rebound today to come back from where we ran last week. It's real easy to quit and give up when things are going badly. Our guys never do that."
-- Jeff Burton, on his turnaround from a disappointing run at Fontana

"To come here to Las Vegas and see that kind of crowd and see a Las Vegas kid win this thing, they got their money's worth and I appreciate them all coming out."
-- Jeff Gordon, on the impressive crowd at Las Vegas

"We're definitely showing improvement. To have as many problems as we had and still finish 16th, it shows that we were pretty quick."
-- Sam Hornish Jr., on his up-and-down day

"It was all about survival out there."
-- Reed Sorenson, on the record 14 cautions and how physical the race was

"I think it's the first failure we've had in over two years. These guys do a great job with engines. It's just one of those things that happens now and again."
-- Matt Kenseth, on his 43rd-place finish due to engine problems

"It's really huge."
-- Bobby Labonte, on his fifth-place finish

"I think we misjudged how fast this tire was gonna be and the engine turned more. We'll be wiser going to Atlanta."
-- Jack Roush, on three of his five cars having engine problems

• Kyle Busch won the Shelby 427, his 13th victory in 153 Cup Series races.

• Busch is the first driver to win the Shelby 427 from the pole. His last win came on Aug. 10, 2008 at Watkins Glen International.

• This marks the fifth consecutive season that Busch has won races in all three of NASCAR's national series. He swept Nationwide and Truck races at Auto Club Speedway on Feb. 21.

• Clint Bowyer (second) posted his first top-10 finish in four races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It is his second top-10 finish in 2009.

• Jeff Burton (third) posted his eighth top-10 finish in 12 races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

• Jeff Gordon led his 20,000th lap to rank seventh in Sprint Cup history. Gordon now has led 20,006 laps.

• Fourteen caution periods sets a record for the Shelby 427. Sixty-six caution laps also is a race record.