TALLADEGA, Ala. — The game plan was to stay up front, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. made it work to perfection.
The third-generation NASCAR star started fourth and never fell lower than that after the first few laps of Sunday's Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway.
Earnhardt wound up leading 133 of the 188 laps on the 2.66-mile oval, holding off teammate Michael Waltrip by a car-length at the end as the Dale Earnhardt Inc. drivers finished 1-2 in a restrictor-plate race for the third time in the last six tries.
Earnhardt, like his late father, has become a master of the superspeedways, racing to his third victory in four plate races.
As much as he loves the races on NASCAR's big tracks, though, Earnhardt is wary of the big crashes that so often decimate the field in those events — just as a 24-car pileup did late in Sunday's race.
"I knew I didn't want to be any farther back than fifth because I knew it was going to happen," Little E said, referring to a crash on Lap 164.
"With the rules package, we're gouging and getting into the sides of each other just because it's so hard to pass, and I didn't want any part of it."
Mark Martin, involved in the wreck, caused the third and final caution of the day when his battered car stalled in the grass on the back straightaway eight laps from the finish.
With oil on the track, NASCAR — just as it did in the season-opening Daytona 500 — brought out the red flag and stopped the cars on the backstretch to give the safety crews time to clean the track and allow the race to finish under green.
The race resumed following a delay of 15 minutes, 29 seconds. After the green waved with four laps to go, Earnhardt, whose father won 10 times on this track, kept everyone behind him to the finish.
He got plenty of help from Waltrip, who acted as a blocker for his teammate and friend until they raced off the fourth turn on the final lap.
FIRESTONE 225: At Nazareth, Pa., after prevailing in a battle of strategies when polesitter Gil de Ferran ran out of fuel on the final lap of the Firestone 225, Scott Sharp is heading for the Indianapolis 500.
He'll be returning to the scene of one of the greatest embarrassments in auto racing history. As the polesitter last year, he spun out on the first turn of the race.