Kyle Busch, who started the 2015 Sprint Cup racing season hospitalized with a shattered leg and broken foot, won what many have called the most challenging race on the NASCAR circuit, the Toyota-Save Mart 350, Sunday at Sonoma Raceway.

He and Kurt Busch finished 1-2, the first time the brothers have accomplished the feat at the Sprint Cup level. The two have accomplished the feat in other series since Kyle was 12 and Kurt was 19, the runner-up said.

Kyle Busch had a devastating start this year. He was hospitalized the eve of the season-opening Daytona 500 after crashing in the Xfinity race and didn’t return to the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota until the May 24 Coca-Cola 600, finishing 11th.

Despite being cleared to drive, Busch and his team knew that the intricacies of the Sonoma road course would be a challenge to his broken left foot.

“I’m a left-foot braker,” he said, and his brake pedal is hard. “The most brakes you see is Turn 4, Turn 7, Turn 11, and you see over 1,000 pounds of brake pressure. I don’t know what that equates to if you were doing a leg press, but it’s a lot. The foot definitely tells me that it’s a lot!”

Busch iced the leg after driving Friday and Saturday, “no different than any other athlete would,” he said. “I knew it was going to get painful and I was going to have to power through it,” he said.

“But you know, when you’ve got fresh tires and seven laps to go and you see the checkered flag waiting for you, you forget about all those things.”

His brother led his share of laps after taking the front spot from Los Gatos native A.J. Allmendinger, who started from the pole but had a disappointing finish after his car developed fuel system problems.

Late in the race, El Cajon native Jimmie Johnson took the lead and tried to keep it during a late-race caution called when Bakersfield native Casey Mears lost a wheel when his axle housing broke. Johnson was among those who stayed on the track; his teammate Jeff Gordon followed suit to move up to third. Others, including the top three, headed down pit road.

Johnson kept the lead on the restart, out-driving Jamie McMurray and Gordon, the Vallejo native and four-time Cup champion who was making his last appearance as a full-time driver at his home track.

But Kyle Busch came charging, passing Gordon and McMurray with six laps to go. While Busch pressured Johnson for the lead, Clint Bowyer moved up to third, with Kurt Busch right behind.

With five laps left, Kyle Busch passed Johnson for the lead. His older brother passed Bowyer three laps later but couldn’t better his position before Kyle reached the checkered flag.

“I needed one more lap,” the elder Busch said after the race.

Bowyer finished third, his best finish in 2015. He won this race in 2012.

“Yeah, it was wild,” he said. “Unfortunately, I was kind of on that outside line, and my only chance was just to try to hammer my way up through them, and then Kyle was able to sneak up on the inside of them and kind of beat me to the punch line and went on to win the race.”

Bakersfield native Kevin Harvick, Joey Logano, Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kasey Kahne, Ryan Newman and Sam Hornish Jr. rounded out the top 10.

The victory at Sonoma gives Kyle Busch a shot at a slot at the Chase for the Championship, a 10-race elimination contest at the end of the season. NASCAR officials decided upon his return he could have the same opportunity as drivers who were able to start the season. But Busch also must accumulate enough points to be among the top 30 drivers during the next 10 races to make the grade.

“You know, certainly it’s feasible,” he said, especially because he no longer has to push for a win. Mentioning his poor finishes at the Dover and Michigan races, he said, “Those were entirely just my fault, obviously, and I’ve got to be better than that. We can’t have any more of those. … We don’t have to put ourselves in a bad spot when we’re running third, fourth or fifth to try to get that victory.”

Gibbs, his team owner, smiled frequently after the race as he watched the largest Sonoma Raceway crowd in 10 years stand on their feet to cheer a driver they have jeered in the past. “I think everybody likes a comeback story.”

He was somber the morning of the Daytona 500 after Busch’s accident. But Gibbs began cheering up after he visited Busch at home, where the driver was recuperating from multiple surgeries. “I figured he was going to be drugged up and everything, probably wouldn’t recognize me.”

To Gibbs’s surprise, Busch was awake. “He was bounding around, and then he starts wiggling his toes. And I go, ‘What are you doing?’”

“Well, it doesn’t hurt,” Busch told Gibbs.

“He was off all the pain medication, and he was roaring from the start,” Gibbs recalled.

It won’t be easy to accumulate enough points to get Busch into the Chase, he conceded. “But I think Adam (crew chief Adam Stevens) and Kyle, we’re going to go after it every week, and we’ll see what happens.”

Much of the weekend celebrated Gordon’s last race as a full-time Sprint Cup driver. The stands were filled with fans wearing No. 24 shirts and hats, who were cheering early in the race when the Vallejo native was a top-five challenger.

On Lap 24, fans stood on their feet and waved commemorative towels printed with his racing number, 24. Between Turns 1 and 2, drivers passed a portion of ground painted with his number and the words “Hometown Hero.”

But Gordon said his No. 24 Chevrolet “didn’t feel right.” He emerged from a pit stop on Lap 53 in 28th position, and made up only a few spots.

After another pit stop on Lap 74, with his car feeling “really weird,” Gordon was hit with a penalty when a pit crew member threw a spring rubber over the wall. The driver was sent to the end of the lead lap line.

His decision to stay out after Mears’s mishap moved Gordon up to third, but he soon was passed by those on fresh tires. He ended his day in 16th place.

“I was really optimistic going into the race. Our car was good in practice. We qualified well. They dropped the green, and we were moving forward. I was pretty happy with it,” Gordon said about the front end of the race.

“I felt that rear started to go off pretty early on, and saw some guys coming from further back. So we tried to make a couple of adjustments.” But those changes didn’t pay off, he said.

“The car was really, really good there at the end,” he said. “And that last thing — I was just taking some risk on that last pit stop. We didn’t have anything to lose at that point.”

He assured fans, “Nothing’s going to take away from this weekend for me. I know it wasn’t the finish we all wanted, but it was a very memorable weekend. It’s still a bit more fun to go to hang out with some of my friends and family here. But, I hate that we weren’t a little bit better.”

Among the other California drivers, Elk Grove native Kyle Larson was 15th; Alpine native Cole Whitt was 22nd; Josh Wise, of Riverside, ended 28th; and Matt DiBenedetto of Grass Valley was 29th. Allmendinger, who managed to return his crippled car to the race, finished 37th.

While Johnson leads the season in wins, with four, Harvick is tops in points. Behind him are Martin Truex Jr., Logano, Johnson, Earnhardt, Brad Keselowski, McMurray, Kahne, Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Gordon, Paul Menard, Denny Hamlin, Newman, Aric Almirola and Bowyer for the top 16. Kyle Busch is 37th in points.

Others with wins are Harvick and Kurt Busch, with two each; and with one each Truex, Logano, Earnhardt, Keselowski, Kenseth, Hamlin and Carl Edwards.

Drivers return to Daytona International Speedway in Florida for the Coke Zero 400 Powered by Coca Cola, which will be broadcast at 4:45 p.m. Pacific time Sunday on NBC.