Busch gets on track at Pocono

Kurt Busch’s winless drought is over. His absence from the Chase may not last much longer, either, not with the way crew chief Pat Tryson is calling all the right shots.

Busch dominated Pocono Raceway at Long Pond, Pa., from the opening lap on Sunday and raced his way back into championship contention, giving himself a perfect belated birthday gift: a trip to Victory Lane.

A day after he turned 29, Busch ended a 51-race losing skid that lifted him into the 12th and final spot of the Chase for the Nextel Cup standings with five races left until the championship races start.

“It’s been 50-something races, and that was a tough burden,” Busch said.

Busch, who missed the Chase last season after qualifying in 2004 and 2005, hadn’t been in the top 12 in points since a 100-point penalty for reckless driving in June knocked him six spots down to 17th.

Now he’s back and on his biggest roll of the season. He turned a 13-point deficit behind Dale Earnhardt Jr. into a seven-point edge.

The race didn’t include Robby Gordon, who was suspended by NASCAR early Sunday morning for his conduct at the Busch Series race in Montreal a day before.

Earnhardt was second and Denny Hamlin, who swept both races at Pocono last year, finished third. Points leader Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson rounded out the top five.

Tony Kanaan held off protege Marco Andretti for the final 27 laps and won the Firestone Indy 400 at Brooklyn, Mich., a race marred by a spectacular wreck in which Andretti Green Racing teammate Dario Franchitti took a wild, upside-down ride.

The race began 4 1/2 hours late because of rain. Only eight of 20 cars that started the 200-lap event were running at the end.

There were a couple of crashes early in the race, including one that took out defending winner Helio Castroneves and Vitor Meira, but the big one came on Lap 144 when Dan Wheldon, trying to overtake Franchitti, the leader, appeared to drive his right front tire into Franchitti’s left rear.

Suddenly, Franchitti’s car soared high in the air, backward and upside down. He came down on top of the car driven by Scott Dixon and, before it was over, cars driven by A.J. Foyt IV, former Michigan winner Tomas Scheckter, three-time series champion Sam Hornish Jr. and Ed Carpenter were also involved.

Dixon and Hornish were able to return to the race, looking for points, after their crews scrambled to fix their battered cars. Hornish wound up ninth and Dixon 10th, while Franchitti, who dominated the race before his crash, was 13th.

Lewis Hamilton of McLaren won his third Formula One race of the year at the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest, beating Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari and Nick Heidfeld of BMW-Sauber.

Defending F1 champion Fernando Alonso was fourth.

Hamilton led from the start in a turbulent race -- his team was penalized after it was deemed to have hindered Hamilton’s qualifying efforts. With six races to go, Hamilton extended his lead over Alonso in the standings to 80-73.

Chris Carmody held off Dan DiGiacomo’s challenge during the final laps and hung on to win the Auto Club Late Model division 40-lap feature race Saturday night at Irwindale Speedway. DiGiacomo finished second, 0.560 of a second behind Carmody.

FOR NEXTEL CUP STANDINGS, D10