Kevin Harvick pushed Jamie McMurray through the third and final green-white-checkered attempt, then made his move on the final mile of the speedway to win Aaron's 499 race in Talladega by about one-third of a car length. 
McMurray was leading Harvick in a tight drafting pairing approaching the 3rd and last green-white-checkered flag - accordingto NASCAR rules- caused by accidents that wrecked most of the field. Still Harvick have been waiting until virtually the last moment to make his move, pushing into the rear of McMurray’s car in the trioval loosening its rear end. That push opened the door for Harvick to move alongside McMurray, beating him through the finish line
"Everything just played out perfect for us today. We broke that drought. You saw people trying that move in practice. I had to wait till the trioval. I could see we were way in front of all the guys behind us. When he [McMurray] made that dart to the right I immediately went to the left."
Harvick, who stayed near the back of the pack for most of the race before drafting forward with McMurray with about 50 laps to go, had not won a Sprint Cup race since finishing first in the 2007 Daytona 500, 115 races ago, ending at the same time a frustrating winless streak for Richard Childress Racing, which last visited Sprint's Cup victory lane in Oct. 2008. Timing for Harvick's victory wouldnt have been any better after the announcement that his sponsor Shell/Penzoil was moving to Roger Penske's Racing Corporation. Left without a sponsorship for the next season, Harvick was actually a free agent, with few options on hand.
McMurray, who appeared almost victorious during the final cautions, ended up second, followed by his team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya, Denny Hamlin and Mark Martin, both of them finishing consistently in the top-10 the latest races.
McMurray said he thought Harvick would try to pass on the outside in the trioval, so he tried to protect unsuccessfully his place.
"When he went left, it really loosened the car up. When there’s somebody directly behind you and they pull their car out really fast, it feels like you opened a parachute behind the car, and you lose 3 to 5 miles per hour immediately. Once he got underneath me, all I was doing was side-drafting and hoping I could stall him some."
Wreck after wreck, caution sessions delayed the race’s finish, extending the length of the event 12 laps to 200. The field made two attempts to finish the race under the green-white-checkered, but crashes on the first green-flag lap ended both those attempts.
On the first green-white-checkered attempt of the afternoon, McMurray was sprinting toward the white flag when contact between Ryan Newman and Joey Logano sparked a nine-car wreck at the back of the pack. That produced the second green-white-checkered.
The race’s second green-white-checkered attempt was foiled quickly as Jimmie Johnson and Greg Biffle made contact and spun near the front of the pack, prompting a caution.
A caution bunched the field for the final regulation run to the checkered flag. The yellow flag appeared when Jeff Burton, who had one of the day’s strongest cars, was trapped in traffic, tapped by Mike Bliss and sent on a wild ride. Burton slid across the track and was hit by Jeff Gordon. Scott Speed also was involved in the wreck.
After the race, Jeff Gordon had a furious dispute with his team-mate Jimmie Johnson about JJ's behavior on track after getting driven down to the yellow line by him in the closing laps of Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 at Talladega Superspeedway, ruining yet another chance Gordon had at victory.
"We got a huge push going down the back straightaway. And I don’t know who it was, the 39 maybe or somebody gave me a big shove and I was coming 10 miles an hour faster than anybody and the 48 is testing my patience I can tell you that. It takes a lot to make me mad and I am pissed right now. You know when a car is going that much faster. ... I don’t know what it is with me and him right now but whatever...
We were going to drive by some cars and the No. 48 decided to change three lanes and keep me from going by him,” said Gordon. “And that's just not cool when you've got cars going that much faster than you. So maybe he just didn't know it but we'll just take what we can get out of here and go onto the next one....
"I did everything I could to keep from wrecking him. I did. I saw what he was doing and I know I couldn't go underneath the yellow line to pass him so I did everything I could to check up but somebody was still pushing me and turned me and I actually got into him. But he's been testing my patience and it's about reached its boiling point."
