Kyle Busch won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Crown Royal Presents The Heath Calhoun 400 at Richmond International Raceway, after a tight battle with Jeff Gordon during the race. The two drivers dominated the race, as Busch led 226 and Gordon 144 laps pf the total 400 laps. 
Busch ran away with the first half of the race, leading all but eight of the first 229 laps before Burton powered past him in Turn 3 on Lap 230. Burton held the top spot for 20 laps, only to surrender it to Gordon, whose car came to life in the middle of a long green flag run and appeared to maintain his lead towards the last laps of the race. However, the sixth caution brought by Sam Hornish Jr.'s wreck on the backstretch on lap 389, was a bad sigh for Gordon and set up the five-lap dash to the finish. Still, it was Kyle Busch who ultimately surged on Gordon in the restart and celebrated his birthday in the victory lane.
Kevin Harvick ran third just behind Gordon, continuing his high performance that brings him on the top of driver's standings with a 10 points trail to Jimmie Johnson. Harvick is followed by Jeff Burton and Carl Edwards. Juan Montoya, Martin Truex Jr., Ryan Newman, Marcos Ambrose and Johnson completing the top 10 finishes.
Kyle Busch commented in the victory lane:
I figured I was going to get the outside [for the last restart]. All I wanted to do was just get into Turn 1 smooth and get a good launch up off Turn 2 down the backstretch -- and then make sure I got into [Turn] 3 without over-driving it. ...
I knew if I could just get through Turn 3 OK and hammer down off Turn 4 and get him cleared that it would be pretty good -- and it worked. That's what I did. Did I have a plan? Was that exactly my plan? No. I was just going to drive it as hard as I could, and make whatever happened happen. It worked, just off the cuff."
Gordon finished second for the eighth time since his last win in the series on April 5, 2009 at Texas, 39 races ago but this time he seemed less frustated after the race.
"I've been doing this long enough to know they don't give out trophies for leading any lap other than the last one.
We're a team that's made huge strides, in my opinion, from last year. ... That's what I'm excited about. We're leading laps at a lot of different types of tracks, and I think our team is really on top of our game.
Yeah, it's a little disappointing that we haven't won some races yet, but if we keep doing this, those will come. We've got to keep putting ourselves in position."
