Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

March 17

Kasey Kahne wins first career race at Bristol

The Associated Press

(Continued from page 1)

"You all right?" crew chief Alan Gustafson radioed Gordon.

"Yeah, I'm OK. Did we take out Matt, too?" Gordon asked.

With the top two cars in the garage, the rest of the field headed to pit road to reset for the final 100 laps.

"I hate that for Matt Kenseth," Gordon said. "He was coming, and it was just a matter of time before he caught us. We needed points. This definitely isn't going to get us many."

Kenseth, winner of last week's race at Las Vegas, said the crash was unavoidable.

"There's not a lot either one of us can do about that," he said. "There was nowhere to go."

Before the Gordon-Kenseth crash, Gordon and Logano were dueling for the lead. Gordon used a two-tire stop with about 175 laps to go to gain eight spots on pit road and take the lead. Logano chased Gordon around the 0.533-mile bullring, pulling even with the four-time champion as he exited the corners only to lose ground on the straights.

Lurking behind in third was Hamlin, who apparently got tired of waiting for Logano to get past Gordon and showed how restless he was with slight contact on Logano's bumper as they exited Turn 2.

The tap caused Logano to back his car into the wall and took him out of contention, leading to the post-race drama Bristol is known to create.

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