FONTANA, Calif. — Matt Kenseth held off a challenge by Michael Waltrip on a restart with seven laps to go Saturday and went on to win the Californiaspeedway.com 300 Busch Series race.
Kenseth had built a lead of nearly 2 seconds over Waltrip before Tony Raines was knocked into the wall by another car on lap 139 of the 150-lap event, bringing out the last of six caution flags. That gave Daytona 500 winner Waltrip one last shot at the leader.
On the restart on lap 144, Waltrip's Chevrolet drew alongside Kenseth's Ford, but the leader was able to stay ahead and steadily increased his lead. The winning margin was 0.882 seconds — about 10 car-lengths.
Kenseth, a part-time Busch Series racer and the Winston Cup points leader, averaged 129.419 mph.
"I was concerned about Michael," Kenseth said. "It was a good race when we got side-by-side. Luckily, I had enough power under the hood to get away from him."
Waltrip said, "I'm glad I made Matt work for it a little bit, but he was just a little better than I was."
NO REPEAT: Going into Sunday's race, no driver has more than one victory in the first nine races.
If that streak continues here, it will tie a Cup record for consecutive races with different winners at the start of a season. The record was set in 2000.
That year, it was Dale Earnhardt Jr. who was the first to gain a second victory. Earnhardt is also one of this year's winners, a list which also includes his teammate Michael Waltrip, Dale Jarrett, Matt Kenseth, Bobby Labonte, Ricky Craven, Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman and Jeff Gordon.
Four of the top-10 drivers in points have yet to win this season. Jimmie Johnson, the defending winner at California Speedway, is fourth in the standings, Kevin Harvick is sixth, defending series champion Tony Stewart is seventh and Elliott Sadler is 10th.
There were 18 winners in 36 races last season. The modern record of 19 was set in 2001.
SPARK PLUGS: Four of six Winston Cup winners here have won after starting in the top five. Jeremy Mayfield started 24th in 2000 and went on to win. Rusty Wallace won from 19th in 2001. Chevrolet and Ford have each won three times at the California track. Bobby Labonte finished second in a Pontiac in 2000, and Bill Elliott fourth in a Dodge in 2002 for the best performances by those makes.