DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Kevin Harvick came as if fired by a cannon on a wild ride around Mark Martin in the final corner of the Daytona 500 to win in front of a spinning pack of cars. One was on fire as it slid across the finish line on its roof.

In one of the wildest scenes in the history of this race, Harvick blew across the line inches ahead of Martin and against a backdrop of smoke and flame. The yellow flag flew after the green. Controversy continued into the night as NASCAR struggled to explain why it didn't follow its own rules.

Harvick won the Daytona 500 when NASCAR allowed the field to race back to green, a tradition thought to be outlawed after years of dangerous and legendary finishes. The carnage at the end came after three lead changes in the last seconds of a long day in racing history.

"It was the wildest thing I've been a part of in a long time,'' Harvick said.

Martin, the sentimental favorite who has never won this race, believed the caution should've flown as he and Harvick fought to the line. A crash behind the leaders began as they entered the short chute out of the banked fourth corner. A caution at the point of the crash would've frozen the field and given Martin the win.

He complained to his crew but didn't fight for it afterward.

"I was ahead when the crashing started,'' Martin said.

He seemed quite happy to finish second.

"Nobody wants to hear a grown man cry,'' Martin said. "I'm not going to cry about it. This is what it is, and that's it. That's the end. Their decision. They made the decision, and that's what we're going live with.''

Martin is probably the only driver in the race who would've reacted this way. Given the opportunity to rage into the night and throw the 2007 Daytona 500 finish into controversial infamy, he chose to bow aside graciously and allow Harvick to celebrate.

"It was the last lap of the Daytona 500,'' Harvick said. "We had to go.''

He blew past Kyle Busch in the third turn of the final lap after getting a push from Matt Kenseth at the end of the backstretch. The momentum pushed Harvick's yellow Chevy high into the banking and alongside Martin, who seemed to be on his way to winning the race he's struggled with for his entire career. Martin could've pushed Harvick to the wall in the fourth turn. He could've turned him in the tri-oval. Instead, he seemed to wait for a push from Busch.

Busch dropped to the apron entering the chute coming out of 4, bobbled, and slammed into Kenseth. Martin never lifted, moving back ahead of Harvick who had nosed in front in the seconds earlier.

"I thought I would get the push from Busch,'' Martin said. "I didn't know he wasn't there any more.''

Busch disappeared in the smoke just as Harvick pulled alongside Martin in the tri-oval. They both waited for the flagman, who leaned over the track and dropped the checkered with the 07 Chevy of Clint Bowyer tumbling and burning into the infield. At that moment, the outcome was in the hands of NASCAR. The message from the control center above the track to the flagman came as the cars reached the line.

"Put it out,'' David Hoots, NASCAR's race director, radioed down.

The yellow flag flew after Harvick passed under the flagstand.

"When the 07 went sideways on the track, the yellow came out,'' NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said afterward. "At that point the 29 was ahead of the 01 and declared the winner.''

That was a good explanation and all, except that's not what happened. Bowyer was upside down before the leaders took the checkered flag. The caution was thrown after that, technically, and according to NASCAR's own rules, after the race ended. The fact that there was an official margin of victory (.020 seconds) proves it. There is no margin of victory in a race that ends under caution. And since no caution flew before the end, NASCAR had no official account of the crash. In effect, it never happened.

The initial race results showed that all the cars involved were running at the end. That the entire viewing world saw the 07 burning and tumbling down the tri-oval with a sixth of the field spinning and crashing through the smoke and fire demonstrates that NASCAR's reasoning was as brazen as Martin's wasn't.

Harvick will apparently go down in history as the winner of the 49th Daytona 500 in part because NASCAR didn't follow its own rules and because Martin didn't want to cause more controversy.

At the end of a controversial week, Harvick went from sixth to first on the final lap to leave a field of fuming drivers behind a wall of smoke and NASCAR behind a wall of deceit. It simply didn't end the way NASCAR saw it.

But the only man who should've been screaming into the night was fine with second place.