The 49th running of the Daytona 500 was one for the ages, as it concluded with a wild ending and one of the closest finishes in NASCAR Cup Series history.
It’s an ending that’s still talked about today — not just because of the photo finish that marked its conclusion, but also due to what could have been for one of the sport’s elder statesmen at the time.
The stories were numerous entering the race. There were a whopping 61 cars that entered the 2007 Daytona 500 and 18 drivers who went home, including Bill Elliott and Paul Menard.
It also marked the first foray into the Great American Race for open wheel ace Juan Pablo Montoya, a rookie for Chip Ganassi Racing. He was one of four rookies in the field, the others all named David — David Ragan, David Gilliland and David Reutimann.
Speaking of Gilliland, he started off his maiden full Cup season with a bang, winning the pole for the race with a speed of 186.320 mph. His Robert Yates Racing teammate Ricky Rudd started on the outside of the front row, giving the team a clean sweep of row one.
The 2007 Daytona 500 also marked a coming out party of sorts for Michael Waltrip Racing, which had existed in varying forms before 2007 but became a bona fide three-car Cup team for the start of the year, running Toyotas. Michael Waltrip, Reutimann and Dale Jarrett were its drivers, and all three were able to qualify for the big show on Sunday.
It wasn’t without controversy, though. Waltrip and his team were each docked 100 driver and owner points, and his crew chief, David Hyder, was fined $100,000. NASCAR inspectors found an illegal substance in the fuel system of Waltrip’s No. 55 Toyota before and after qualifying. The penalty left Waltrip in the negative in the points standings after Daytona.
After a part-time foray into the series in 2006, Red Bull Racing arrived at Daytona for its first full-time run in 2007 with a pair of cars, driven by Brian Vickers and AJ Allmendinger. It fared worse than MWR; both entries failed to qualify.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s Tony Stewart and Hendrick Motorsports’ Jeff Gordon won qualifying Duels one and two and were slated to take the third and fourth starting positions. However, Gordon failed inspection after the second duel and was relegated to the rear of the field.
The rest of the top 10 starters consisted of Kurt Busch, Dale Earnhardt Jr., David Stremme, Jeff Burton, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin and Matt Kenseth.
The race kicked off with Gilliland taking the helm on the bottom and staying out front for the first 18 laps, right until the first caution for Boris Said spinning on the backstretch. Gilliland then lost the lead on pit road to Kurt Busch, who held off Stewart’s advances for the next 30 laps.
Most of the first three-quarters of the race was led by either Busch or Stewart until they both got caught up in an incident together. Stewart’s No. 20 touched the apron ever so slightly, getting it loose up the track a bit in a turn. Busch’s right-front fender got close to Stewart’s left rear, which turned Stewart around and into Busch. Both crashed into the outside wall, and while Busch was able to come back out, Stewart’s day was done after leading 35 laps.
The next 40 laps or so had four short green flag runs, with the longest coming from laps 160 through 174. Several multi-car crashes happened, with a Big One on lap 175 when Jimmie Johnson got loose, hit the wall and spun down into traffic. Johnson and Reutimann retired from the race after the accident.
Another five-car crash occurred around 187 in which Carl Edwards, Ken Schrader, Dave Blaney and more were involved.
Then, with less than five laps to go, Jamie McMurray’s No. 26 got turned around, collecting Earnhardt and Rudd in the process. The red flag was brought out to clean up, leaving a green-white-checkered finish to close out the race.
Mark Martin, who took the lead on lap 176, started out front in the final two laps of overtime. He maintained it as he took the white, but then with some help from Kenseth coming off the final turns, Kevin Harvick was able to edge out Martin at the line.
Kenseth and Kyle Busch’s cars spun around off of turn 4 as the field approached the checkered flag, and mayhem ensued. Jeff Gordon, Stremme and Clint Bowyer were among several involved in the second Big One, with Bowyer crossing the finish line in 18th on his roof and on fire.
But at the front, Harvick’s No. 29 of Richard Childress Racing beat Martin’s No. 01 by 0.02 seconds. Burton was third, Mike Wallace was fourth and David Ragan rounded out the top five.
Elliott Sadler, Kasey Kahne, Gilliland, Joe Nemechek and Gordon completed the top 10 finishers.
The finish indeed sparked controversy; some felt the caution should have flown upon Kenseth and Busch’s spin, freezing the field before the leaders got to the finish line — much like other races since the 2003 Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, which they argued set a precedent that should have been followed. Depending on when it was thrown, a caution might have given Martin his first Daytona 500 victory in a storied NASCAR career that dated to 1981.
On the other hand, allowing Martin and Harvick race to the line resulted in an ultra-thin margin of victory, a photo opportunity that’s still used in advertisements for racing at Daytona to this day.
Martin, who retired from NASCAR in 2013, had his best shot to win the Super Bowl of stock car racing disintegrate in the final several yards.
Instead, it was Harvick’s 11th victory and — and what ended up becoming his sole Daytona 500 victory before his retirement at the end of the 2023 Cup season. It was also his lone win of the 2007 season, though he did amass four top fives and 15 top 10s that year with RCR.
The team, meanwhile, tallied two additional victories that year with Burton winning at Texas Motor Speedway and Bowyer at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Harvick went on to claim 12 more victories with RCR before shifting to Stewart-Haas Racing, where he retired after the 2023 season, totaling 60 career wins.
Since that race, several Daytona 500s have seen different calls of whether to call the caution on the last lap. But one thing is for sure: The Closer sealed his nickname with the final pass.
Joy joined Frontstretch in 2019 as a NASCAR DraftKings writer, expanding to news and iRacing coverage in 2020. She's currently an assistant editor and involved with photos, social media and news editing. A California native, Joy was raised watching motorsports and started watching NASCAR extensively in 2001. She earned her B.A. degree in Liberal Studies at California State University Bakersfield in 2010.
DW coined the name Closer for Harvick. But in truth, Jimmie Johnson was the real closer during Harvicks years. JJ got way more wins and yep 7 championships. Now that’s a closer.