This week: ”Hometown Hero” Busch returns to Las Vegas atop both the Sprint Cup and NASCAR Craftsman Series and is second in the Nationwide Series. Busch has no wins, two top-five and three top-10 finishes in his four previous Cup starts at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and is primed to take Toyota to its first-ever victory in a Sprint Cup points race. Busch finished second here in 2005 and third in 2006. He was ninth in this race last March. … Busch realizes it’s a little early in the season to get excited about being the points leader of any series. “It doesn’t mean much right now,” Busch said. “If the championship was paid for — ‘woo hoo, yay for us’ — but we’ve still got 33 weeks left in this deal. We’ll take it now and hopefully hold onto it for a while and keep battling with the 24 (Jeff Gordon), 48 (Jimmie Johnson) — we know they’ll come back strong in the points. There are going to be some other contenders, too.”

Last week: Busch had an impressive fourth-place finish in Monday’s rain-delayed finish at California Speedway. “It’s a good championship points day,” he said. “It was pretty cool out there to run the way we did in our Interstate Batteries Toyota. Unfortunately we didn’t have quite the car to get up there and contend with those boys at the end, but overall a good day and that’s all we can ask for. We had a great race car, but not quite as good as those guys at the end. The 24 (Jeff Gordon), 48 (Jimmie Johnson) and 99 (Carl Edwards) were real strong; we knew that from the beginning and in practice.”

Etc.: Busch drove to victory in Saturday’s truck race and finished second to Tony Stewart in the Nationwide Series race, held Monday afternoon at the conclusion of the Cup race.

Hookscenter.com wire report.