Fort Worth, Texas ? Helio Castroneves had a great restart with two laps to go after a lengthy caution and held off IndyCar Series champion Tony Kanaan to win the season finale Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway.

While Castroneves was able to climb the fence to celebrate his first victory this year, Kanaan capped off a season in which he ran all 3,305 laps — the first driver in a major American series to complete every lap.

Kanaan clinched the series title with a runner-up finish in California two weeks ago. He finished outside the top five only once, and the Chevy 500 Sunday was the sixth time this season he was second across the finish line.

In the last IRL season finale at Texas, Kanaan finished side-by-side with teammate Dan Wheldon, edging him by a nose. Wheldon finished second in season points and, like Kanaan, won three races.

Castroneves, the polesitter, regained the lead with 21 laps left and was still in front when Dario Franchitti and Alex Barron slammed hard together into the wall coming out of the fourth turn on the 185th of 200 laps.

Barron was running behind on the outside when the back end of Franchitti’s car appeared to break loose. The impact pinned Barron’s car against the wall, and they continued to slide through the front stretch.

Once the wreckage was cleaned up, there were only two laps left, and Castroneves jumped out to a big lead on the restart.

Wheldon, running in second place out of the caution, contended that Castroneves may have been a little quick on the throttle.

Then he conceded that it didn’t matter.

“He definitely went fairly early,” Wheldon said. “At the end of the day, you can’t take anything away from Helio and Team Penske. I wasn’t going to be able to pass him. He just went before the restart zone.”

Castroneves felt his restart was good.

“Honestly, I don’t know what happened,” he said.

Busch keeps points lead

Concord, N.C. — If Kurt Busch goes on to win his first NASCAR title, he can point to the 500 miles at Lowe’s Motor Speedway as the defining race of his season.

Busch rallied from a fender-bender in practice, a wreck on the first lap of the race, battled with a temperamental car and avoided two near disasters.

All in a day’s work for Busch, who emerged from the UAW-GM Quality 500 on Saturday night with a fourth-place finish and his lead in the points standings intact.

“To be able to do this with dodging so many obstacles — it was the adventure of Kurt Busch and team,” he said.

That Busch and his Roush Racing team were able to survive, and leave Charlotte with a 24-point lead over Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the standings, doesn’t bode well for the rest of the Chase contenders.

He somehow has managed to avoid mistakes and overcome bad breaks through all five of the first 10 NASCAR playoff races.