Gant Avoids Big Crash, Wins at Talladega : Stock cars: Kyle Petty suffers broken leg in 20-car pileup during 500-mile race.

Harry Gant had the right strategy and won the Winston 500 Monday.

Gant went the final 56 laps without a fuel stop to get his 12th NASCAR victory.

The race was halted for 37 minutes by a 20-car collision that left Kyle Petty with a broken left leg.

The incident occurred on lap 71 of the 188-lap race when Petty’s Pontiac became tangled with Ernie Irvan’s Chevrolet on the backstretch, setting off a chain reaction accident among 20 of the 41 cars.

Mark Martin’s Ford was clipped by Irvan, became airborne briefly, but landed upright. Martin’s badly damaged car rejoined the field--seven laps down--when the race restarted after spending 33 minutes under the red flag.

Only six cars left the race. Teams worked feverishly to get cars back into the race so they could earn points toward the Winston Cup title. The front end of Davey Allison’s car was missing when he returned to the track.

“I didn’t see anything, I just felt it,” Martin said. “I took a whale of a lick when I came down. It was like dropping your car off a couple of stories.”

Race officials said Petty suffered the only serious injury--a broken left femur, or thigh bone.

“It was a compound fracture,” Talladega spokesman Jim Freeman said. “The bone came through the skin. But it was a clean break, there was no shattering.”

Several drivers blamed restrictor plates for creating the conditions that led to the wreck. The plates are used to reduce speeds at NASCAR’s two fastest tracks--Talladega and Daytona--but some competitors feel it creates dangerous racing by evening out the field.

“It was just an accident waiting to happen,” Dale Jarrett said. “If NASCAR wants to run restrictor-plate racing, this is what’s going to happen.”

Gant, a 51-year-old grandfather from Taylorsville, N.C., beat his record as the oldest driver to win a Winston Cup event. The Oldsmobile driver won the Miller 500 last year at Pocono, Pa.

After starting from the outside of the front row, Gant moved into the lead with 10 laps left when Ken Schrader went to the pits.

Gant drafted behind teammate Rick Mast--who was not on the lead lap--until the next-to-last trip around the 2.66-mile oval, when Gant moved past.

“My crew was telling me, ‘Draft everyone, don’t go fast, don’t pass anyone,’ ” Gant said. “I let some of the faster cars go. I was just trying to finish the race.”

NASCAR officials reviewed a replay of final lap and said there was “no conclusive evidence” that Gant was assisted by Mast, which would have been a rules violation.

Chevy drivers Dale Earnhardt and Darrell Waltrip pulled away from the others on the lead lap and were comfortably ahead until they came to the pits with 21 laps left in the 188-lap race.

Waltrip finished second, followed by Earnhardt, who had the fastest lap of the day at 197.362 m.p.h. and led for 112 laps.

Earnhardt took the points lead with 1,366, four more than previous leader Ricky Rudd.

Gant led 18 laps and finished with a winning speed of 165.620 m.p.h. He took home $81,950.

Sterling Marlin was fourth and Michael Waltrip was fifth.