DOVER, Del. -- Kyle Busch couldn't hear a thing. He flipped from the primary radio to the backup and back again, listening for any sign of his spotter or crew chief. He told his No. 18 team that if they could hear him, to stand up on the pit wall and wave. NASCAR was on the brink of ordering Busch to pit road to get his radio changed, a necessary safety move that would have seriously derailed his effort at Dover International Speedway only 100 laps in.

And then, just like that, communication was restored.

“

I want to win anything I can get in, but if I have to give one up ... I'd rather give it up Friday than Sunday.

”

-- KYLE BUSCH

"Radio gremlin," Busch said, grinning.

Actually, the likely culprit was the radio plug into Busch's helmet, which the team believed had fallen out. No matter. Sunday afternoon Busch let his yellow race car do the talking for him, taking advantage of a Jimmie Johnson speeding penalty in the final stages to record his second Sprint Cup victory in three weeks. And by the end of this long race weekend at Dover, a tripleheader dominated by the Joe Gibbs Racing driver, every spectator who had passed through the gates of this concrete race track had heard him loud and clear.

Sunday's victory required a little good fortune, to be certain, but Busch was still good enough to lead 131 laps and battle Johnson wheel-to-wheel at almost every turn. That performance came on the heels of Saturday's schooling, a Nationwide Series race where Busch led 191 laps. And then there was Friday, a Camping World Truck Series event where Busch was the class of the field, leading 172 laps before running out of fuel in the end.

Do the math: This weekend at Dover, Busch led 494 of a possible 809 laps, and came frighteningly close -- a few gallons of gas, actually -- to becoming the first driver to sweep a national-series tripleheader at the same race track.

"I told you ... I was going to be mad when I won this race, because I had a shot to sweep the whole weekend," Busch said. "If you miss out on the first one, the last one seems a little easier. If you get the first two, the last one seems the hardest. It's inevitable. It is what it is. It's not going to hurt my feelings to go to bed tonight that I lost Friday. I'm going to think more about today and [how] winning this Sprint Cup championship means more than winning in one of my Trucks does. I want to win anything I can get in, but if I have to give one up ... I'd rather give it up Friday than Sunday." (Continued)