FORT WORTH, Texas - Kasey Kahne ran high in the corners, using every bit of the track. Coming out of the final turn, the rookie finally pushed his car's nose to the outside of Elliott Sadler.

And came up just short - again.

Kahne's furious comeback, after a caution that cost him his lead right after he pitted, came up two-hundredths of a second short Sunday in the Samsung/RadioShack 500.

"I gave it all I got," Kahne said. "I knew it wasn't ours, but it was close."

Sadler's second career NASCAR Nextel Cup win was the eighth-closest in series history, but not even the closest for Kahne this season.

Kahne, in Bill Elliott's old No. 9 Dodge, lost his second race for Ray Evernham by just one-hundredth of a second in a side-by-side finish with Matt Kenseth in Rockingham. A week later, Kahne followed Kenseth to the line again by a much larger margin.

"I don't know if I'm tired of running second, but I'm tired of it being second by .01 or whatever it ends up being," Kahne said.

Sadler took advantage of the series of cautions that hampered Kahne, and another hard-luck Texas moment for Jeff Gordon. Sadler won for the first time in 43 races for Robert Yates, with his other win coming three years ago in Bristol for the Wood Brothers.

"I've heard from some other guys who were picking on me that, `Hey, you've only won one race,'" Sadler said. "They were teasing me week-in and week-out."

Not anymore.

Kahne had just led his 148th lap when he pitted on the 262nd of 334 laps. Right after he got back on the 11/2-mile track, and before Sadler and Gordon made green-flag stops, Ward Burton's backstretch spin brought out a caution.

Kahne got a break, staying on the lead lap with a free pass under yellow, and restarted eighth with Gordon and Sadler running 1-2. The front stayed unchanged, but Kahne made up just one spot over the next 28 laps, 19 of them under three caution flags.

"It 100 percent benefited me ... the more caution laps we could run, the less time the 9 (Kahne) had to get up through the field," Sadler said. "We knew nobody could run with him."

Six laps after the last restart, Gordon suddenly lost speed because of an electrical problem. By time he switched to his backup battery, he had slipped behind Sadler, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and the hard-charging Kahne.

After going inside on the 314th lap to overtake Earnhardt, Kahne continued closing the gap to Sadler. But he couldn't get the lead for the seventh time.

"It's satisfying but a little frustrating," Kahne said. "I didn't need much longer."

Besides three runner-up finishes, Kahne also has a third-place showing in seven races for Evernham. But he was coming off a 40th-place finish at Bristol after an early crash.

"People wondered if we would come back, and I think we did," said Kahne, who started third.

Gordon finished third and Earnhardt was fourth, his fourth top-10 finish at the track where he got his first Cup win four years ago. Rusty Wallace, a runner-up last week, was fifth to stretch his winless drought to 105 races.

Twelve drivers led, with Sadler out front the final 27 laps. Sadler averaged 138.845 mph in the race slowed by seven caution periods that took 45 laps.

The slow laps benefited Sadler, but frustrated Kahne.

"I didn't see any debris half the time. They're putting quickie dry down the bottom of the backstretch where nobody even runs," Kahne said. "It's just ridiculous how long they took."

Gordon had his first top-five finish this season, but fourth straight at one of four tracks where he hasn't won. The four-time Cup champion was involved in crashes the first four Texas races, including while leading the inaugural race in 1997.

Kurt Busch finished sixth and took over the series lead, by 19 points over Roush Racing teammate and defending champion Kenseth, who finished 16th.

Polesitter Bobby Labonte led just five laps, after a gas-and-go pitstop during the caution caused when defending race winner Ryan Newman's car slid into the wall on the 197th lap.

There has never been a multiple winner at Texas, and no driver has ever won from the front row.

Elliott, running a limited schedule for Evernham, started second and led 26 laps. He stayed in the top 10 much of the race before a cut left tire sent his unsponsored car into the wall on the 275th lap.

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