| | Associated Press
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TALLADEGA, Ala. -- Joe Nemechek didn't need a photo to tell him he won the Touchstone Energy 300. It was never that close.
Nemechek won the Busch Series race Saturday at Talladega Superspeedway when he easily beat Buckshot Jones to the finish line. It was redemption for Nemechek, a Winston Cup regular who was edged in a photo finish in last year's race by Terry Labonte.
The 1999 finish was so close that NASCAR officials sent both Labonte and Nemechek to victory lane to wait while they looked at a photo, which showed Labonte won by 0.002 seconds.
This time, everyone knew he finished first.
Nemechek took the lead away from Jones with seven laps to go and steadily pulled away, winning by 0.224 seconds, about three car-lengths.
"Last year, losing to Terry Labonte by a couple of inches was a tough one," he said. "But we worked hard today and made some real good pit calls and had a good car."
Nemechek, who started 35th because rain washed out qualifying and the 43-car field was set by points standings, became the first repeat winner in the race's history. He also won it in 1998.
He used solid pit strategy to motor his way through the field, only taking fuel on the first pit stop and just two tires on the second. He didn't stop at all on the third and final caution of the day, which came on lap 100 when Blaise Alexander hit the wall.
That set up a sprint for the final 11 laps of the race.
Jones, who missed his pit during the race's first caution and had to circle back around Talladega's 2.66-mile high-banked oval to re-enter it, came out of the final caution in first until Matt Kenseth passed him with nine laps to go.
Kenseth, David Green and Jones then tried to battle it out in one line and Nemechek broke off into his own pack. Bobby Hamilton Jr. followed him onto the low side of the track and helped push him into the lead.
"I got a little high and they all went by me like a freight train," Jones said. "That's the bad thing about leading, you always know they're going to make a move on you. But I'm satisfied with the finish considering the driver error I had on the first
pit."
Jeff Purvis finished third and Hamilton, a rookie, finished a career-best fourth. Jeff Green was fifth.
Nemechek became the eighth Winston Cup regular to win one of the nine Busch races this season. Randy LaJoie, who won last week's race in Nashville, Tenn., is the only Busch driver to win a race this season, but wasn't around at the end of Saturday's race.
He brought out the second caution of the day on lap 62 when his car darted across the track coming out of turn two and slammed into the wall. He walked away from his car, but was taken to Carraway Methodist Hospital for treatment.
The race was slowed three times for a total of 15 laps, a relatively calm race by Talladega standards.
Since NASCAR began requiring carburetor restrictor plates in 1987 to slow the cars, multicar accidents have been the norm. But there were only two of them Saturday, and the first -- a seven-car accident on lap 20 -- was the worst of it.
There were 16 lead changes among 10 drivers in the 113-lap event. Nemechek's winning speed was 153.859 mph and he led three times for a total of 32 laps. | |
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 Joe Nemecheck says he's happy to get the win on Saturday.
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Jeff Purvis says all the cars were running well in Saturday's Busch race.
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Buckshot Jones says it was fun leading the race for a while.
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