#57-Jason Keller won the Aaron’s 312 at Talladega on Saturday, his second BGN wins of the season and 7th of his career, holding off #59-Stacy Compton by .163 seconds in a race that saw just three of 43 cars on the lead lap at the finish. On Lap 14 of 117, rookies #10-Scott Riggs and #47-Shane Hmiel started a chain-reaction accident exiting Turn 2 that eventually collected a total of 29 cars. With cars on the fastest area of the track, it was difficult for many to slow in time to miss the melee. “I had a run on Kenny (Wallace) on the outside and I got about two or three feet on him there and he hit my front end and I had to check up and catch it, and I did,” Riggs said. “I just got hit from behind. You can’t check up when you run these kinds of speeds.” Pole-winner Johnny Sauter’s #2 Chevy flipped on its hood and then rolled side-over-side. Mike McLaughlin’s #18 car ended up on top of two others. “I saw them all wrecking and I figured my hole was going to close up sooner or later, but I didn’t know it was going to close up from above,” said #99-Michael Waltrip of the number of airborne cars in the accident. The race was red-flagged for more than 40 minutes while the track was cleaned. Despite the scale of the accident, no drivers were injured. When the race restarted, 14 cars were running, 13 of them on the lead lap. The top three in BGN points now stand at: #24-Sprague, 1,169; #57-Keller, 1,147; #7-R.LaJoie, 1,079. See ThatsRacin.com for a column, Keller misses BGN melee, wins, and for Aaron’s 312 race results.(4-20-2002)
