DAYTONA BEACH - Kevin Harvick, driving a Chevrolet, won the Daytona 500 after a close, accident-filled finish to the race at Daytona Beach today.
NASCAR officials declared him the winner by two hundredths of a second after a late overtaking move past Mark Martin, driving another Chevrolet, withHarvick's Richard Childress Racing teammate Jeff Burton finishing third.
Mike Wallace was fourth to complete a clean sweep of the top places by Chevrolet.
"My go-kart experience in the winter paid off for me," Harvick said.
"I just kept it (the throttle) on the floor. We kept hitting things and the wall. And kept banging into everything.
"We were 30 something with 15 laps go and came up through here."
Martin, a veteran of 23 stagings of the race, shrugged off his near-miss and admitted his failure had largely been his own fault.
"I let it slip through my fingers. I didn't have any pushers. It was really looking good but we came up a little bit short."
Burton finished third while another teammate Clint Bowyer ended up with his car upside down at the start-finish line with his car in flames. He crawled out of the driver's side window uninjured.
On lap 196 a multiple-car crash prompted the red flag and an 11-minute 39 second delay, when racing resumed there was a two-lap shootout for the checkered flag.
Juan Pablo Montoya, the Colombian rookie, finished 19th while Dale Jarrett, a three-time winner, was the highest-placed driver in a Toyota in the manufacturer's debut in NASCAR's premier division Nextel Cup.
