DOVER, Del. — There are some things you just don’t do. As the late- balladeer Jim Croce warned, “you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind and you don’t pull the mask from the Lone Ranger.”
Now you can add another prohibition to that list: You don’t give Kyle Busch an extra dose of motivation.
NASCAR’s hottest and most controversial driver approached Sunday’s Best Buy 400 Sprint Cup race at Dover Int’l Speedway in a determined mood. He lost two races he had dominated earlier in the weekend, not to mention the Sprint All-Star Race and Coca Cola 600 in Charlotte last month.
On top of that, his helmet had briefly been stolen from the Joe Gibbs Racing trailer earlier in the weekend.  Unlike some past cases of the man called “Rowdy” putting on his game face, this episode resulted in a near flawless performance that left all but the next five cars a lap down at the checkered flag.
“That’s four races in the last two or three weeks that I feel like we could have gotten. Is it greed? That’s a good question. I just want to win everything, man. That’s what I’m here for, to win as many races as I can,” he proclaimed after his fourth Sprint Cup win of the season extended his point lead to 142.
After Busch’s Combos Toyota came out of a round of green flag stops just past the halfway mark in the lead, it was all over but the shouting. He led the Roush Fenway Fords of Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth and Jeff Gordon’s Chevrolet to the green flag at the final restart on lap 247.
That was still the order 153 laps later. Martin Truex, Jr. passed Jimmie Johnson for sixth on lap 366 and managed to stay on the lead lap, barely, to the end. Johnson, Jeff Burton, Dave Blaney and Jamie McMurray completed the top 10, one lap down.
“We were able to get to the right place at the right time when it mattered most,” said Busch in a masterpiece of understatement. “But you know, I still have to say that Carl (Edwards) and Greg (Biffle) definitely had the cars to beat today. We were just able to capitalize on pit road a little better than they were and keep our momentum up.”
Crew chief Steve Addington seconded the winner’s assessment. “The way we got ahead was just great pit stops, green flag stops,” Addington said. “I think those guys busted off 12-second stops every time we were on pit road. That gave us a big advantage.”
Busch wasn’t totally off base in saying the Roush Fenway Fords were faster. Biffle led 146 of the first 147 laps from the pole and a race-high 164 laps overall, while Edwards was out in front for 64 mid-race circuits. But when it counted, the table tilted in Busch’s direction.
“That last run, I believe his car was the best car,” said Edwards. “I think over the day, our car was the best on average. We just didn’t put it together. We weren’t fast enough at the end.”
Busch’s margin of victory was 4.224 seconds as he backed off in the closing laps.
Biffle’s early advantage slipped away due to ignition issues that were cured with the flip of a switch. Late in the race, it was traffic that frustrated him.
“It’s just the guy in front has such an advantage,” he lamented. “I couldn’t run him down. I could run the same lap times as him. In fact, I caught him a little bit. Our cars were so equal.”
The Best Buy 400 was an unusual race for Dover with six cautions for 26 laps and three complete cycles of green flag stops. It wasn’t all clear sailing, however, as a massive lap-17 wreck on the narrow backstraight brought out a 16-minute red flag.
The race for Elliott Sadler and Denny Hamlin ended on the spot, and Tony Stewart lost more than 100 laps, finally parking when he could not improve his position further. Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Kevin Harvick and Scott Riggs were all garage bound for long periods.
The melee started when David Gilliland appeared to turn Sadler coming off turn two.  Stewart drilled Sadler in the right side as he came off the outside wall, spinning him back into traffic. Hamlin came in late, and Riggs arrived even later, each hammering the crumpled Sadler machine. No drivers were injured.
The results left Busch, Burton and Earnhardt in the top-three places in the standings, with Edwards up from sixth to fourth, Biffle from 11th to fifth, Gordon from 10th to sixth and Johnson from ninth to seventh.
The biggest loser was Hamlin, who plummeted from fourth to ninth, while Stewart slipped from eighth to 11th. Clint Bowyer, 36th after a long pit stay, dropped from fifth to eighth. Kasey Kahne hung on to 12th, and the last Chase spot, by eight points over David Ragan.