Harvick wins Daytona 500 by 0.02 of a second

Ed Hinton | Sentinel Staff Writer

February 19, 2007

DAYTONA BEACH - It took NASCAR three days to decide the winner of the first Daytona 500. It took NASCAR five seconds to decide the winner of the 49th. History may see little difference in the controversies.

If Sunday's wildest running of NASCAR's showcase race could be summarized in a single sentence, winner Kevin Harvick said it all in a trembling breath: "This is what makes stock car racing what it is."

Good and bad.

Glorious and notorious.

Wild, close, fraught with wrecking -- finished off with judgment calls by officials that leave controversies open-ended, never to be fully answered.

For the final five seconds, the outcome hung in the balance, not just with Harvick and long-suffering sentimental favorite Mark Martin racing side-by-side to the checkered flag.

The outcome also hung in the officials' tower, with a split-second decision at hand: when to throw the caution flag with cars wrecking every which way just behind Harvick and Martin.

By current NASCAR rules, a caution instantaneously freezes the field.

At the moment the wreck occurred, and for a moment or two afterward, Martin was ahead. But no caution came out. The field wasn't frozen, so the most respected driver of all, by his peers, remains 0-for-23 in Daytona 500 starts.

As the two Chevrolets crossed the finish line with Harvick's ahead by a hood, the safety lights finally turned yellow. Freezing the field didn't matter then. The race was over

"They waited! They waited! I can't believe they waited!" Martin yelled to his crew via radio. "I really thought that thing was ours, guys. It still might be."

But after some minutes to consider, Martin knew there was no use arguing. NASCAR decisions, monumental and/or questionable as they might be, stand.

And so he resigned himself.

"This is what it is," said the 48-year-old who almost retired after last season but decided to take a part-time ride with Ginn Racing this season. "And that's it. That's the end. Their decision. They made that decision and that's what we're gonna live with."

All that was clear about Sunday's race was that Harvick had made it to the line ahead. Even beyond the timing of the last caution, much else about the race was open to argument.

It was the closest 500 finish -- .02 of a second separated the top two cars -- since the advent of electronic scoring came to NASCAR in 1993. But history cannot know whether it was the closest 500 ever because there was no definitive photo of Lee Petty and Johnny Beauchamp crossing the line in '59. That's why it took three days for NASCAR to view various photos from different angles and declare Petty the winner.

Was this the wildest? Probably.

"I've seen a lot of these Daytona 500s, and this has to be the wildest Daytona 500 I've ever watched," said Harvick's team owner, Richard Childress, who drove here himself in the 1970s before fielding cars for the late Dale Earnhardt and his many heartbreaks and one Daytona 500 win, in 1998.

What had been a yawner for the first 150 laps exploded into nonstop wild driving and major wrecking for the final 50.

The bedlam was detonated with 48 laps left. Pre-race favorite Tony Stewart, in his dominant Chevy, had worked his way toward the front after being sent back to 40th as a penalty for speeding off the pit road.

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