Carl Edwards easily held off a late challenge from Kevin Harvick on Saturday to win the NASCAR Busch Series race at New Hampshire International Speedway.

Edwards has finished first or second in five of the last eight races, including all three of his 2005 Busch victories. But the Roush Racing driver remained a distant second in the season standings, 308 points behind runaway series leader Harvick.

Clint Bowyer, Harvick's Richard Childress Racing teammate, appeared on the way to an easy victory, building leads of up to 4 seconds and leading 127 of the first 143 laps before making a green-flag pit stop, the first of the leaders to head for pit road for his final stop.

That gave the lead to Edwards, who got a big break moments later when the seventh and final caution flag of the race waved, putting Bowyer a lap down. Bowyer immediately got that lap back, thanks to NASCAR's rule allowing the first car a lap down to regain the lead lap under caution.

But it also left Bowyer 16th on the ensuing restart on lap 150 of the 200-lap event. He managed to work his way back through heavy traffic and grabbed fifth from Johnny Sauter on the last lap.

Meanwhile, Edwards, who now has eight career Busch victories, was in charge to the finish. Harvick managed to get within about three car-lengths in heavy traffic three laps from the end but, once Edwards got past the lapped cars, he pulled away, winning by 0.604 seconds - about five car-lengths.

(AP)