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1st Win of the 2009 season for Toyota/Save Mart 350 winner Kasey Kahne. 1st Career Cup win for the newly formed Richard Petty Motorsports team after Kahne’s trip to Victory Lane on Sunday. 2 Number of times winner Kahne led the Toyota/Save Mart 350 Sunday. 3 Cars moved to the …

Kasey Kahne held off Tony Stewart on no less than four restarts at the end of the race to claim his first victory in over a year.

*The King returns to Victory Lane* Sure it was cool to see Kasey Kahne in Victory Lane after a year long drought, but for me it was even greater to see Richard Petty get his first win as owner since April 18, 1999. It was a day Richard Petty Motorsports got its first win, but it was also a day where three RPM cars recorded top 10 finishes (Sadler – 10th; Allmendinger – 7th). RPM has cooled down since its impressive season debut at Daytona, but days like this are big for a team without a driver in the Chase, and a manufacturer – Dodge – that has struggled all season.

Max Papis had high hopes coming into the wine country of Sonoma, to the site of his Sprint Cup debut in 2008. However, it did not start out very well for the Italian road racing vet. His No. 13 GEICO Camry fell a lap down very early in the race and it started to look like a typical day for this team, hanging around in the back and simply looking to finish.

Sponsorship is always a hot topic in racing and in the current economic environment, many teams, even some top Sprint Cup teams, are worried about sponsor dollars. And in the Nationwide Series, that talk is often doubled. There has been growing concern over the last decade as more Sprint Cup drivers are entering more Nationwide Series races. Sponsors love to get on the hood of a big star at a reduced rate, and so they flock to those teams like flies to honey and teenage girls to Kasey Kahne. This left many longtime and full time Nationwide teams without sponsorship, and many out of business altogether as the Cup teams have pushed them aside. The trend has turned off many longtime series fans, as well, as they watched their favorite teams and driver fall by the wayside. Now fans have a chance to change that.

*In a Nutshell:* Ron Hornaday, Jr. took the checkered flag 1.039 seconds ahead of Dennis Setzer to win the rain delayed Copart 200 Saturday afternoon at the Milwaukee Mile. Hornaday held onto the lead on the final restart with just eight laps remaining to score his 41st career victory. Brian Scott, Todd Bodine and James Buescher rounded out the top 5.

Déjà vu. Last year, Carl Edwards shook off a disastrous run at Kentucky and a weak start to his defense of the 2007 Nationwide title with a breakthrough win at the Milwaukee Mile. That’s exactly what happened on Saturday night, again. Edwards, who stalked the race leaders for much of the event, finally got past Kyle Busch with 44 laps to go, and never looked back, holding Busch off on two late race restarts to score his first Nationwide win of 2009.

Had you watched qualifying on Friday, you may have been asking yourself, "why did Scott Speed have to qualify on time while John Andretti had a guaranteed spot?NASCAR’s website has Speed in the 35th spot in points and Andretti in 36th." The answer is simple; you were looking at the wrong standings. The top 35 rule is based on the owner’s points and not the driver’s points. When Andretti sat out two races to go to Indy for the 500, Front Row Motorsports put Tony Raines in the car. Despite the fact that Scott Speed was able to supass John Andretti in the driver's points, it was Raines' efforts that kept the team ahead of Team Red Bull in the owner's standings. And even though Speed raced at Infineon on Sunday, Team Red Bull didn’t accumulate those owner’s points--NEMCO Motorsports benefitted from his 37th place finish.

In the Sprint Cup Series, road racing is a rarity. Since 1988, the series has only held two road races a season. Some fans claim that Sprint Cup cars are not designed for road courses, and thus, should not race on them. Sunday’s race might have proved those fans wrong. …

Who… gets my shoutout of the race? Running on a smaller budget is usually not indicative of a great finish, but someone forgot to give Marcos Ambrose that memo. Ambrose once again showed his considerable road racing skill as he was alternately patient and aggressive in his march from the …