Just after a restart, Busch made a daring four-wide pass on the outside to take the second position from Carl Edwards and then moved around Jeff Gordon to grab the lead for good with 49 laps remaining.

"The past four weeks have been struggles for us," Busch said. "We were looking to come back here to Richmond and get back on track, just to run a solid race and actually finish in the top-10 and hopefully the top five and have a chance to win the thing. Fortunately we were able to do that."

The victory was Busch's third in the Sprint Cup Series this season and the 15th of his career. He also became the second driver to win a Cup race on his birthday.

Cale Yarborough won twice on his birthday. Yarborough picked up the victory at North Wilkesboro, NC the day he turned 37 years old on March 27, 1977. He won at Atlanta six years later to the date as well.

Busch also scored a weekend sweep at Richmond as he won Friday night's Nationwide Series race. He joined Harry Gant (1991) and Kevin Harvick (2005) as those drivers to win both races on the same weekend at the three-quarter- mile track.

"This is really nice to come out here and be able to do this weekend, especially on my birthday week; it means a lot," Busch said. "To do it three days in a row is always fun. Unfortunately, it wasn't a Camping World truck race that we won here on Thursday, but it was a late model race. We could have swept the whole weekend."

Busch became the youngest driver in series history to win his first 15 races.

Tony Stewart came on strong in the closing laps to finish second.

"I was most impressed tonight with our pit crew," Stewart said. "We had one bad stop that we lost about six spots, but the majority of the night, they were gaining us track position. Man, it makes my job a lot easier when they do that."

Jeff Burton finished third, despite an incident with Dale Earnhardt Jr. midway through the race. Earnhardt Jr. got loose and bumped Burton, putting him into a spin. Earnhardt Jr. finished one lap down in 27th.

Ryan Newman came in fourth to give Stewart-Haas Racing two of the top-five finishing positions.

Newman bumped Mark Martin from behind after a late-race restart, putting Martin into a spin. Martin Truex Jr. hit Martin after the spin.

"We had the leader strategy, but we just got caught up when I turned (Mark Martin's) car around there on that restart. We lost four spots, and those were the four spots we needed to get back to the front."

Martin recovered nicely for a fifth-place finish.

Sam Hornish Jr. came in sixth, while Jamie McMurray was seventh. Gordon fell behind in the late-stages as he finished eighth.

Casey Mears and Juan Pablo Montoya rounded out the top-10.

Denny Hamlin led the most laps with 148, but lost valuable track position after a lug nut problem on a late-race pit stop. He finished 14th. Hamlin also led the most laps in last year's spring race at Richmond, but a tire problem put him out of contention to win.

Three-time defending series champion Jimmie Johnson had a frustrating night at Richmond. Johnson, who had won three of the last four races here, was first penalized for entering pit road too fast. He then lost the brakes in his car and spun on lap 191.

Johnson was later involved in a crash with David Stremme and Kasey Kahne. He ended up finishing 34 laps behind in 36th-place.

The 400-lap event at Richmond saw a track-tying record of 15 cautions - mostly accident-related - for 79 laps.

Gordon reclaimed the lead in the championship standings with a 10-point advantage over Kurt Busch, who finished 12th. Stewart moved up to third in points (-39), while Johnson dropped to sixth (-151).