Brad Keselowski charged past race leader Kyle Busch late in Sunday’s Kobalt 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and kept his Number-2 Team Penske Ford in front over the final six laps to notch his first victory of the young season. Keselowski overcame a speeding penalty on pit road to claim his eighteenth career Cup Series win and first since March of last year at Auto Club Speedway – thirty-four races ago. Keselowski’s margin of victory over teammate Joey Logano was sixty-seven one-hundredths of a second. Jimmie Johnson led a race- high seventy-six laps and finished third in his bid for back-to-back victories after winning last weekend in Atlanta.

Busch grabbed fourth place with Austin Dillon completing the top five. Pole sitter Kurt Busch led only the first thirty-one laps and finished ninth, one of twenty-two drivers running on the lead lap with Keselowski at the checkered flag … The afternoon began with forty-mile-an-hour winds whipping across the mile-and-a-half desert oval and it looked for a while near the end of the day that Busch would blow the field away after seizing the lead on a late restart with a daring three-wide pass and pulling away. But the Number-18 Toyota developed a vibration in the closing laps that forced the reigning Sprint Cup Series champion to eventually surrender the lead to Keselowski.

Despite missing his second trip to Victory Lane this weekend … Busch won Saturday’s X-FINITY Series face, he did hold onto the early-season lead in the standings and enjoys a seven-point advantage over Johnson and Kevin Harvick – who are tied for second.