Martin wins inaugural Talladega truck race

Mark Martin might like Talladega a little more now.

Martin, who routinely expresses his disgust for tight racing the superspeedway provides, held off everyone on the final restart to win the John Deere 250 on Saturday. It was his fifth victory of the season.

Points leader Todd Bodine took the lead from Martin with nine laps to go, as he and teammate Ted Musgrave freight-trained past the No. 6.

But a lap later, Boston Reid spun to bring out the caution.

Moments after that, Bodine was black-flagged for passing Martin while going below the yellow line, considered out of bounds at Talladega. After arguing that he was forced below the line, Bodine served his penalty -- a passthrough down pit road -- that dropped him to the back of the field in 27th position.

Musgrave inherited the lead under caution and led the restart with four laps to go.

By the time the field was on the backstretch, Martin edged around Musgrave for the lead, followed by Mike Wallace in second.

A single-file line followed Martin around the 2.66-mile superspeedway, but nobody could get around the veteran.

The race was clean until the final lap, when a multi-truck pileup occurred heading into Turn 3 as several machines were destroyed.

The skirmish allowed Bodine to come all the way back to finish in fourth and hold on to his points lead.

Unofficially, Mike Skinner finished second, followed by Ted Musgrave, Bodine and Johnny Benson. NASCAR was still trying to detemine results while Martin celebrated.

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