Fort Worth, Texas ? Elliott Sadler had a fast car all day. He’s just glad things slowed down at the end.

Helped by a flurry of late cautions and another hard-luck Texas moment for Jeff Gordon, Sadler got out in front and then held off rookie Kasey Kahne in the Samsung/RadioShack 500 on Sunday.

“It 100 percent benefited me … the more caution laps we could run, the less time the 9 (Kahne) had to get up through the field,” Sadler said. “We knew nobody could run with him.”

Sadler, who started 19th, finished just two-hundredths of a second — a half-car length — in front of Kahne. It was Sadler’s second Nextel Cup win, his first in 43 races for Robert Yates Racing.

With a last push out of the final turn, Kahne had his left front panel just alongside the rear of Sadler’s Ford as they crossed the finish line around the lapped car of Johnny Sauter. It was the eighth-closest finish in Cup history.

“We just about got there,” Kahne said.

Kahne had led his 148th lap when he took his Dodge into the pits on the 262nd lap. Right after he got back on the track, and before Sadler and Gordon made green-flag stops, Ward Burton’s backstretch spin brought out a caution.

Only after getting the free pass under yellow, Kahne stayed on the lead lap and restarted eighth. Gordon and Sadler were 1-2.

Kahne made up only one spot over the next 28 laps, 19 of them run under three yellow flags.

Then six laps after the last restart, Gordon suddenly fell off the pace because of an electrical problem. By the time he switched to his backup battery, he had slipped to fourth behind Sadler, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kahne.

Texas is one of four tracks where four-time Cup champion Gordon hasn’t won a race. Despite his fourth straight top-five finish in Texas, Gordon has been snakebit at the track. He was involved in crashes the first four Texas races (1997-00), including when he led the inaugural race in 1997.

It was the third runner-up finish for Kahne, who also has a third-place showing in his seven races for Ray Evernham. Gordon finished third, and Earnhardt was fourth, his fourth top-10 finish at the 11/2-mile track where he got his first Cup win four years ago.