In one of the most dramatic finishes of this, or any other season, Roush-Fenway Racing's Jamie McMurray side-drafted Hendrick Motorsports' Kyle Busch in the final few feet of Saturday night's Pepsi 400 at
Daytona to score his first win since October 2002 at the Lowe's Motor Speedway.
The last restrictor plate race using the current generation of Nextel Cup machinery was filled with drama and incident from the word go and even though there was no ‘big one' a succession of smaller crashes insured that plenty of pre-race favourites found themselves playing catch-up and salvaging what they could.
There was no repeat of the Friday evening rains at the monstrous 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway on Saturday as the 43 starting drivers took the green flag to start the 160-lap race with polesitter Jeff Gordon quickly losing the lead to second place starter Denny Hamlin as the field made their first few rather tentative steps around a slick and greasy Daytona track.
The action behind the leaders started as early as the fourth lap when Jeff Green pinched Kasey Kahne against the turn one wall to bring out the first of eight caution periods. On the resumption of the race Hamlin continued to lead with his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Tony Stewart moving into second place but on lap 15 disaster struck as Stewart bumped Hamlin coming out of turn four causing Hamlin to spin into the closely following #20 Home Depot Chevrolet with both cars making contact with the wall.
Behind the spinning teammates Reed Sorenson tapped Bobby Labonte into Dale Earnhardt Jr, who also spun leaving three potential winners out of the running inside the first 20 laps.
No sooner had the race restarted before the yellow flags were out again as David Stremme got a little over ambitious in his bid to help Tony Raines down the front-stretch with Raines spinning into the outside wall.
![Jamie McMurray [pic credit: Ford media/Autostock]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/283688.jpg)
