TALLADEGA, Ala. Jamie McMurray held the bottom line at Talladega Superspeedway, one eye on the finish line and the other in his rearview mirror. He was certain if he stayed put, Kevin Harvick s lone attempt to pass would be on the outside.
He was wrong.
Harvick ducked low in the tri-oval at Talladega then drag-raced McMurray to the finish line Sunday, nipping the Daytona 500 winner for his first victory in over three years. Harvick had been mired in a 115-race drought dating to the 2007 Daytona 500.
I ll tell you what, everything just played out perfect for us, Harvick said in a hurried Victory Lane. Because rain postponed the Nationwide Series race Saturday, the winner had to hustle across the garage to run another 312 miles less than an hour after winning the longest Talladega race in Sprint Cup series history.
The race went 200 laps because of three attempts at NASCAR s version of overtime, and there were a record 88 lead changes among a record 29 drivers.
The last lead change came within inches of the finish line, and the margin of victory of 0.011 seconds was the eighth-closest in NASCAR since it began using electronic scoring in 1993.
A dejected McMurray simply guessed wrong with the race on the line.
I really thought that Kevin was going to go high, McMurray said after his second-place finish. I felt like I was close enough to the yellow line that there was a lot more racetrack to the right. I was really guarding against the outside. It s hard to explain to you guys that aren t in cars, but when there s someone directly behind you and they pull their car out of line really fast, it s like you pull a parachute in your car.
It literally feels like you lose three or five miles an hour immediately, and when that happens, the car that s doing the passing just has the momentum.
Juan Pablo Montoya, teammates with McMurray at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, finished third and silently watched a replay of the finish as he waited to start his post-race interviews.
Wow, he said with a sympathetic shrug for his teammate.
The race was fairly clean for the first 465 miles, as drivers simply tried to ensure they d be around at the end. That s when the chaos usually breaks out at Talladega, and Sunday was no exception.
Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson tangled on the track in the second consecutive race. Gordon believes Johnson squeezed him down the track late in the race, triggering a crash that took Gordon out of contention, and Gordon didn t mask his anger after the race.
The 48 is testing my patience, I can tell you that, said Gordon, who finished 22nd. It takes a lot to make me mad. I am (mad) right now. I don t know what it is with me and him right now.
Johnson was later involved in his own accident, tangling with Greg Biffle on the second attempt at overtime. Biffle had been second on that restart, but struggled taking off and dropped back through the field. Johnson had thought he cleared him, but then drifted into his lane to trigger a crash that sent the defending four-time champion hard into the inside retaining wall.
That set up the third and final green-white-checkered finish. Before this season, NASCAR made one attempt at a two-lap sprint to the finish. The week of this year s season-opener, though, NASCAR decided it would allow up to three attempts to finish a race under green.
That tweak to the rules cost Harvick the Daytona 500 -- he would have won the season-opener if the rules had not been changed but benefited him on Sunday. The three restarts gave him opportunity to slice his way through traffic; he was in seventh on the first attempt, fifth on the second and third on the final restart.
He immediately hooked on with McMurray, while Denny Hamlin lined up with Montoya.
I had a really good restart, and I m like, We got him. I m with (Hamlin), I m going to win this, Montoya said. All of a sudden, the inside just took off.
With Harvick pushing hard on his bumper, McMurray pulled him far ahead in a two-car breakaway that ultimately cost him the race.
Harvick had rehearsed his next move several times this weekend, knowing what he d do and where on the track he d do it if in position to win the race.
He made the move to the outside and I jerked left, so I was going the opposite way that he was going, he said. It s kind of like that old theory, if you re the car leading the race, you don t want to be the one that makes that call. He made the move to the right and I just went left.
It gave Harvick a victory just days after sponsor Shell Oil Company announced it was leaving the driver and owner Richard Childress at the end of the season to move to Penske Racing. The sponsor shift means Childress, who is trying to re-sign Harvick, must also shop for funding that can keep the driver at RCR.
I think it s great karma with everything that has happened this week with the sponsor and everything, he said. I think it s kind of funny in itself. The karma thing is the best part.
Hamlin finished fourth and was followed by Mark Martin, David Ragan and Clint Bowyer. Kurt Busch was eighth, while Kyle Busch and Mike Bliss rounded out the top 10.
