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Harvick Wins Bud Shootout Amid Wrecks

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By TONY FABRIZIO

afabrizio@tampatrib.com

Published: February 8, 2009

DAYTONA BEACH - Kevin Harvick charged from fourth place on the final lap of a green-white-checkered finish to win Saturday night's Budweiser Shootout as cars were spinning and wrecking behind him.

Sound familiar? Harvick won the 2007 Daytona 500 in similar fashion, although this time, NASCAR officials threw the caution lights well before he reached the flag stand.

"We won the Daytona 500 this exact same way, just never giving up," said Harvick, whose 0.002-second victory against Mark Martin in that race stands as his most recent Sprint Cup points win.

Jamie McMurray held the point at the start of the green-white-checkered "overtime" and at the white flag, but Harvick shot between Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson for second and then slipped his No. 29 Chevy between McMurray's Ford and the wall on the backstretch.

Almost as soon as he took the lead, a wreck involving Johnson, Hamlin, Kyle Busch and others - yet another in a night of wrecks - broke out behind the leaders.

"It was crazy," Jeff Gordon said after finishing fourth. "It was absolute madness out there. These things have turned into bumper cars, because of way the draft works."

McMurray, who won Daytona's summer race in 2007, finished second in the 31st edition of the non-points prelude to the 500, which had a record field of 28 cars because of a change in the qualifying criteria.

Tony Stewart finished third in his debut as an owner/driver with Stewart-Haas Racing, and A.J. Allmendinger was fifth.

Stewart said his car wasn't really as good as third place, but he saw promise.

"I'm happy with it," he said. "It wasn't the prettiest third place I ever got, but if there ever was a time to take one this was it. ... I'm going to bed tonight with a lot of confidence I didn't have before."

Defending champion Dale Earnhardt Jr. led a race-high 24 laps before getting caught in a multicar crash with 12 laps remaining in the scheduled distance. Greg Biffle, Bobby Labonte and Paul Menard also were involved, and the right side of Earnhardt's car - not his Daytona 500 car - was destroyed.

"I was real loose getting into Turn 1, and me and Kyle were drafting on the inside, and he gave me a real good run into the lead," Earnhardt said. "I just lost the right rear, and got shuffled through the middle.

"I was trying to regroup back there and figure out what to do. I knew there was going to be a wreck and hoped I could get through the pack before it happened, but we didn't."

Joey Logano, the most hyped rookie in history, had a forgettable debut as Stewart's heir in the No. 20 Toyota, completing only three laps.

A second-place finish in the preliminary ARCA race forced him to start from the back because he missed the driver's meeting, and he got caught in a wreck with David Ragan, Robby Gordon and Scott Speed.

"You get caught in the back and it's kind of what happens," Logano said. "I just saw one get loose, check up and then saw he was coming down, so I floored ahead to the apron. I got clipped just enough to send me head-on back into the wall.

"I was just trying to get a feel for it before we went up there and mixed it up with everybody."

The race was split into segments of 25 and 50 laps, with a 10-minute pit stop period in between. Carl Edwards, the runner-up to Johnson for the 2008 Sprint Cup title, won the first segment.

Jeff Burton, racing his new Caterpillar colors, also had to drop to the rear for the start because of an engine change. He crashed out on Lap 32 and finished 24th.

"The cars are a handful, but they're putting on a heck of a show," Burton said.

Reporter Tony Fabrizio can be reached

at (813) 259-7994.

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