HAMPTON, Ga. — Just a few laps from victory and comfortably out front, Kyle Busch had no thoughts of taking his foot off the accelerator. The team that fired him was back there somewhere, lurking in the rearview mirror, as was the guy who replaced him.

Even when he got hemmed in behind the lapped car of Dale Jarrett, a former champion soon to be retired, Busch refused to back off. He pulled right up on graying driver's rear bumper, leaving about enough room to slide a sheet of notebook paper, and surely would have given him a blast of the horn if only stock cars came with one.

The message was clear: The old guard would have to move aside. The future of NASCAR was coming through.

"He was slowing me down a tremendous amount," Busch said, a tinge of disdain in his voice. "I was either going to move him out of the way or he was going to get out of the way."

Once Jarrett was out of the way, Busch finished off a dominating romp around Atlanta Motor Speedway for the first win with his new team — and he brought along Toyota for the ride.

The Japanese automaker became the first foreign winner in stock car racing's top series since Jaguar in 1954, when NASCAR was still just a regional attraction not too far removed from its moonshining roots. Tony Stewart crossed the line second in another Camry to give the ferners a 1-2 finish in the most red, white and blue of American sports.

Konichiwa, Victory Lane!

"To have Kyle come in and take this one and Tony finish second, wow!" said Jim Aust, president of Toyota Racing Development. "Finishing one-two for our first Cup win — I don't know how you improve on that."

While it was a day of triumph for one company, another of NASCAR's myriad business partners found itself getting blasted from all sides. There was more talk about Goodyear's tires than Toyota's landmark win, and no one was more ticked off than the runner-up.

Feeling like he had just driven 500 miles on a sheet of ice, Stewart would like to say sayonara to Sprint Cup's exclusive tire provider.

"That was the most pathetic racing tire I've ever been on in my professional career," he said. "Goodyear can't build a tire that is worth a crap."

Others were a bit more diplomatic, but Stewart's view was hardly in minority. Busch and third-place finisher Dale Earnhardt Jr. also griped about their rubber. Pole winner Jeff Gordon managed to finish fifth but fretted that every lap might be his lap because of those slip-slidin' tires.

"I'm exhausted right now," Gordon said. "I feel like I've run a thousand miles. That's the hardest day I've ever had at Atlanta, especially for a top-five finish."

The Atlanta debut of NASCAR's bigger, bulkier Car of Tomorrow, which is harder to tame than the old car, didn't help matters.

"You're always on the edge out there," Busch said. "It's the worst I've ever felt in a race car, and I won the race."

He handled the trying conditions better than anyone, which isn't too surprising. No one drives their car so close to the edge, or cares less about what others might think.