MEXICO CITY (AP) – Kyle Busch won his third consecutive race on NASCAR’s Nationwide Series, holding off Marcos Ambrose by less than a second Sunday in the Corona Mexico 200.

Busch passed Scott Pruett on the 72nd of 80 laps to take the lead. Pruett finished third, followed by Carl Edwards.

There isn’t a driver out there on a better run than Busch, who is second in the Sprint Cup standings and entered this race in third on the Nationwide list. In a race that included two red flags, he stayed out of trouble on the 2.518-mile road course at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez before finally moving past Pruett.

Ambrose trailed by 1.139 seconds with two laps to go, and cut over three-tenths of a second off that deficit on lap 79. But Busch was able to hold on for a 0.737-second win.

In 2007 at this race, Pruett was in a similar spot when teammate Juan Pablo Montoya sent him spinning. This year – at almost the exact same point in the race – it slipped away again.

The third-place finish was still a career best for the 48-year-old Pruett, a road-course ace making his 10th Nationwide start. He finished fifth in Mexico City last year.

Pole-sitter Colin Braun barely had a chance to get comfortable before Pruett passed him at the start of the second lap. Pruett led by over 6.4 seconds at one point before a caution brought him back to the pack before the 66th lap.

AP-ES-04-20-08 1818EDT