LOUDON, N.H. – Cherryfield’s Andy Santerre didn’t win the New England 125 Busch North race Saturday afternoon, but he picked up another fan: race winner Martin Truex Jr.

Truex and Santerre waged a tremendous duel for the last 79 laps, but Santerre couldn’t get past the 23-year-old Mayetta, N.J., native, who won by two-tenths of a second.

Santerre poked the nose of his new Chevy Monte Carlo inside Truex on several occasions but couldn’t complete the pass.

What impressed Truex was Santerre didn’t elect to bump him out of the way. He tapped Truex’s rear bumper a few times but that was it.

“I can’t thank Andy enough for racing me clean all day,” said Truex. “If he had passed me, I wouldn’t have been able to catch him. That’s why I like racing guys like him. He’s a class act.”

Santerre said the two cars were pretty even.

“I had a little better car on the bottom, but he ran a perfect line. It would have been tough to pass him without knocking into him and we didn’t want to do that,” said Santerre. “It was a good race. We had fun. He had the car that got out front quick.”

“My car was a little loose at the beginning. I couldn’t drive it. So we put some wedge in it,” Santerre added. “We should have left it alone because the track tightened up at the end of the race. We should have known it would. We’ve raced here enough. That little bit of wedge made it too tight to get Martin at the end. He was fighting a push and was slowing down real bad in the middle of the corner. I tried to get under him, but I couldn’t complete the pass. The nose would slide out. I would have slid into him and taken him out.”

He couldn’t have passed Truex on the outside because the fastest groove has moved up the track and he would have found himself stuck in debris if he had tried the high groove, he explained.

Santerre, the defending Busch North champ and current points leader, also said he was aware “that if I had tried to race for the win, I probably would have wound up 30th [due to a wreck]. You kind of have to take what your car gives you and that’s what we did today.”

Santerre added that winning another points title is a top priority.

“I want to win that second championship. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be doing this,” said Santerre, who has six top-two finishes, including three wins, in eight races.

Santerre, who started fourth, expanded his points lead to 161 points over 19-year-old Ryan Moore of Scarborough. Moore finished fourth and expanded his lead in the rookie points race.

Brad Leighton of Center Harbor, N.H., finished third.

Truex, who started on the pole, said he didn’t expect to be able to hold off Santerre and the rest of the pack.

He said his car was tight.

“On the long runs, Andy would run me down and put pressure on me. It seemed like when he got to my bumper, he made me even tighter,” Truex said. “I really didn’t think I could hold him off. My right front was really in bad shape at the end. Luckily, we did. He raced me clean and I was real happy about that.”

Truex’s win was his second in four Busch North races. He is also running a limited Busch Grand National schedule. He pocketed $13,500 while Santerre took home $10,100.

Moore, making his NHIS debut, said he was happy with his finish.

“My car was real good up until lap 100. It was a little tight from the get-go and I was afraid by the time we got to lap 100, that it was just going to get worse and worse and that’s what it did,” Moore said. “We just kind of had to ride it out and get what we could get out of it today. The right front tire was gone. I was just hanging on. I tried to scavenge a top five out of it and that’s what we did.”

Moore started second and his fourth-place finish was worth $7,500. Leighton won $8,000 for third.

Mike Johnson of Salisbury, Mass., rounded out the top five and earned $6,000.

As for the other Maine drivers, Kelly Moore, Ryan’s dad and team owner, finished 12th after getting spun in a side-swipe incident with Dale Quarterley of Westfield, Mass.

“The car was absolutely horrible,” said Kelly Moore. “It was tight. We were a sitting duck. We pitted, came back up through and had a top six or seven car. Then the 32 [Quarterley] got up underneath us and ran into the side of us. I don’t expect any less from him.”

Moore gave Quarterley an earful after the race.

Sanford’s Mike Gallo finished 16th after starting 30th; Strong’s Tracy Gordon finished 18th, two spots higher than he started; Morrill’s Travis Benjamin was one of the drivers who most improved his position by finishing 21st after starting 32nd; and Eliot’s Carey Heath was involved in a wreck and finished 31st. She started 29th.

There were six cautions in the race and 39 cars took the green flag.