Bowyer won a green-white-checkered flag finale Saturday for his first NASCAR Busch Series victory of the year after four runner-up finishes.

``It means a lot to win the race, not by dominating, but battling it out against the best in the world,'' said Bowyer, a three-time career winner on the Busch Series.

Almost from the start, the Dover 200 was a mess, with no more than a handful of laps ever being completed before the caution came out after another accident. There were a track-record 13 cautions for 46 laps.

Matt Kenseth finished second and series leader Kevin Harvick was third. Harvick, who has completely dominated the series, has the season title nearly wrapped up.

Harvick, who started 24th and patiently worked his way up, could make it a championship double-double. With his win last week at New Hampshire, he has the early lead in the Chase and qualified 25th for Sunday's Nextel Cup race. Even with so much at stake in the Cup races, Harvick has no plans to ease off the remaining Busch schedule.

``The plan's been going pretty good as we go through the year,'' he said. ``We've got through everything as planned.''

Harvick has a whopping 659-point lead over Carl Edwards with six races remaining.

Early race leaders Jamie McMurray and Martin Truex Jr. faded late and fell out of contention.

McMurray, who led 52 laps, and Jason Leffler round out the top five. Truex, racing on the same track where he made his Busch debut, led 77 laps before fading. He spun with two laps left for the final caution, forcing the two extra laps, and finished a disappointing 30th.

On the green-white-checkered restart, Bowyer took control and pulled away, leaving Harvick and Kenseth in a fight for second. Bowyer finished 0.547 seconds ahead of Kenseth.

With cars seemingly spending as much time in the garage as they did on the track, Bowyer finally caught Matt Kenseth with just over 20 laps away from the scheduled finish and recorded his first Busch win since last October at Memphis.

Bowyer started 16th and was the 15th different winner in the series this season.

Bowyer has been lost in the shuffle behind Harvick, his Richard Childress Racing teammate.

``We've had a tough year,'' Bowyer said. ``We've come really close, we just couldn't get a win. Finally, finally we get a win.''

Harvick poked fun at a Speed TV report this week that claimed his team was manipulating their wheels to gain a performance advantage in the Cup race in New Hampshire, dedicating the race to ``all the wheels that we have.''

The garage was humming with activity early, as the caution came out only 11 laps into the race. Not even pole sitter Scott Riggs was immune, spinning late in the race before rebounding to finish 12th. Besides the accidents, 20 penalties were issued, mostly for pitting before pit road was open.

Rounding out the top 10 were Reed Sorenson, Kyle Busch, Greg Biffle, J.J. Yeley and Michael Waltrip. Sorenson lost control on the last lap and slid across the finish line.