That might sound a little backward for baseball fans, but it made perfect sense today in the O'Reilly 300 Busch Series race.

Kenseth ended Carl Edwards' two-race Busch winning streak by pulling his car out of a spin without hitting the wall early in the race, then overtaking Denny Hamlin with nine laps left.

Hamlin's frantic efforts to pass over the final five laps failed in the closest margin for a Busch race in Texas at 0.128 seconds. Edwards finished third.

Kenseth, who was running second when a tire popped and caused the spin on Lap 55, got his second Busch win of the season and his 10th top 10 in 12 Texas races. He chose to lock up the wheels to try to stay off the wall.

"I didn't really save it. We still spun out," Kenseth said. "I knew I'd have all flat tires and lose a lap going to the pits. I just tried to keep it in the middle of the track and stop."

Hamlin and Casey Mears battled for the lead after a wreck during a green-flag pit stop scrambled the field about 125 laps into the 200-lap race. The fourth of seven cautions straightened things out 15 laps later, getting Kenseth back on the lead lap and Edwards back in contention.

Edwards didn't win, but he kept a stranglehold on the Busch points standings. He has 1,370 points through seven races, and a 403-point lead over Dave Blaney. Edwards has almost 100 points more than Kevin Harvick did at the same point last year, when Harvick clinched the Busch title with five weeks to go.

It looked for a moment as if former Formula One star Juan Pablo Montoya might have a shot at his second Busch win. He beat everyone off pit road by taking just two tires on a caution with less than 40 laps left. But he was called back on the same caution because of a missing lug nut, and he dropped further back when he scraped the wall shortly after the restart.

The day ended for Montoya, the 2000 Indy 500 winner who joined NASCAR late last season, when he tangled with Busch series rookie Marcos Ambrose on Lap 181. He finished 30th.

Montoya took the blame for the lug nut gaffe. He said he let the clutch go before the car was back on the ground, sending the car lurching forward without the lug nut.