Brian Bielanski, Editor

RICHMOND, Va. (RacingWire) – Someday someone other than Kyle Busch or Denny Hamlin will win a Sprint Cup race at Richmond International Raceway but that day will have to wait at least until September.

Hamlin led 39 laps but it was his teammate Busch who was the class of the field. Busch led 235 laps on his way to winning the Richmond Spring race for the third consecutive year.

Hamlin has won the last two fall races at Richmond making it five straight for Joe Gibbs Racing.

“We had a really really good car and we knew if we could fight through traffic a little bit better than the 11 (Hamlin) that we would have a shot at the win, and we did that tonight,” said Busch.

Hamlin won his charity race on Thursday, the Nationwide Series race on Friday and was going for the sweep on Saturday.

Despite not completing the sweep Hamlin was happy with second place. “I'm ecstatic, to be honest with you,” said Hamlin. “You can't be mad at second place. Yeah, I want to win, trust me. It burns that you didn't, but how we didn't I can live with that.”

The first half of the race was relatively uneventful accept for a little incident between Ryan Newman and pole-sitter Juan Pablo Montoya. That ended Montoya's chances to win but set up the first of several incidents that made Richmond act like a short track for the first time all weekend.

On lap 238 Montoya returned the favor, spinning Newman and putting him into the turn three wall.

NASCAR warned Montoya to keep clean for the rest of the race and Newman told his crew he'd “take care of this after the race.”

What followed was five rapid fire cautions, the last of which, on lap 302, involved nine cars.

Jeff Gordon was caught up in the wreck and hit the inside wall, in an area without a Safer Barrier. Gordon had the wind knocked out of him but was otherwise uninjured.

The race restarted on with 85 to go and Kyle Busch quickly took the lead. Busch opened a two second lead over his teammate Denny Hamlin and never looked back.

Hamlin finished second. Kasey Kahne was third, with David Ragan and Carl Edwards rounding out the top five.

Carl Edwards remains atop the points lead. He has a nine point lead over Jimmie Johnson.