Carl Edwards earned his first win at Bristol Motor Speedway Saturday night in the Sharpie 500 after dominating the latter stages of the race.

It was also Edwards' first career short track win and the second victory of the 2007 season.

"This is the biggest win of my career," said Edwards, who performed his usual celebratory backflip in front of the crowd of nearly 160,000 fans. "This is awesome. To win the night race at Bristol is huge and I can't thank (crew chief) Bob Osborne enough for making the right calls.

"Man, those restarts were just wearing my nerves out. That took about three or four years off of my life, I think. I'm just very excited to win the race to say the least. I'm very, very grateful to be here, to win this race. I don't know if it's sunk in yet."

Edwards took the lead for the final time on lap 371 and led the rest of the way.

As a first-time Bristol winner, Edwards feels more drivers may find themselves in Victory Lane now that the track has been resurfaced and that the ones who have dominated in the past may not do so any longer.

"I think in the big picture this is a transition race," he said. "You've gone from an older style car at the track that's been the way it's been for however many years to a new style race track. It looks a lot the same, but sure isn't the same, so you've got a new race track and new cars.

"I believe it's gonna take a while to shake the field out and see which teams excel at this specific type of track with these cars. So it is a change. It may look the same, but it's not. It's a very different race track. I think the thing I'm excited about is what I heard one of the Goodyear engineers say, that they may bring back a tire with a little more grip, which I think will make it an even more spectacular race."

Kasey Kahne, winner of the Food City 250 Busch Series race on Friday night at BMS, led a total of 305 laps after starting on the pole but ended up in the runner-up slot.

"They beat us at the end," said Kahne. "We dominated the first half. The car was really good. The car felt good at the end. We ran second. It was a great weekend for everybody at Gillette/Evernham. Everybody stepped up. It's nice to get a Dodge Avenger up front."

Clint Bowyer finished third, recording his best finish ever at the World's Fastest Half-Mile.

"This is one of my favorite tracks," said Bowyer. "It's always busy here and there are two tracks I want to win at, here and Daytona. Tonight was fun and exciting."

Tony Stewart finished fourth, followed by Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman, Bobby Labonte, Kyle Busch and Greg Biffle.