Daytona 500 Results - Jamie McMurray winner of huge NASCAR race

NASCAR's best took to the track on Sunday in Daytona, with one of the wildest versions of the race in recent history.  Winning the race for his first time ever was Jamie McMurray, who picked up a sweet Valentines Day present in Florida.  It wasn't easy though, as the race took a total of six hours and saw McMurray holding off tough competitor Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the final lap to win by just 0.12 seconds.  See NASCAR Daytona 500 results below.

From Sportsnetwork:

"It's unbelievable, really," a tearful McMurray said. "To be where I was last year, for Johnny Morris, Chip [Ganassi], Felix [Sabates] and [sponsor] Bass Pro Shops to take a chance on me and let me come back, it means a lot to me.

"After we won at Talladega, we went to McDonalds, so tonight I think we'll have a Big Mac," he jokingly said."

McMurray was referring to his most recent NASCAR race victory before Daytona, when he won at Talladega in November.  In today's Daytona race, there was a delay for potholes that were discovered on the track as well the typical melee of racecar crashes to deal with.  However within six hours time, McMurray was the 2010 Daytona 500 winner.  Earnhardt Jr came in second, followed by Greg Biffle, Clint Bower and Kevin Harvick to round out the top 5 finishers.

Here's the Top 15 for today's Daytona 500 including the early points standings:

1     Jamie McMurray     190      ---
2     Dale Earnhardt Jr.     175     -15
3     Greg Biffle     170     -20
4     Clint Bowyer     165     -25
5     Kevin Harvick     156     -34
6 (T)     David Reutimann     155     -35
6 (T)     Martin Truex, Jr.     155     -35
8     Matt Kenseth     142     -48
9     Juan Pablo Montoya     139     -51
10     Carl Edwards     138     -52
11     Mark Martin     132     -58
12     Jeff Burton     130     -60
13     Kyle Busch     126     -64
14     Paul Menard     124     -66
15     David Ragan     120     -70

Today's pothole incident which first appeared between turns one and two forced a lengthy delay of two and a half hours to fix up the track.  Forty laps after that restart though, the potholes reappeared and required another 45-minute delay.  It was believed that the heavy rains and colder temps in Daytona this past week contributed to the issue.

As for crashes, there were several of those as well.  Bill Elliott and Joey Logano had an incident, followed by a crash on the backstretch between Kasey Kahne and Robert Richardson, Jr.  Kevin Harvick was in the lead on the second restart, but McMurray soon claimed the lead off a nice slingshot move with his car.  With his win, there's also a special $1 deal for Atlanta Motor Speedway tickets.  The ATL track has a three year promotion where they'll offer tickets for their March race with limited tickets available for the price of the winning Daytona 500 car's number.  McMurray is #1, and a select number of ATL tickets are now just $1!

Congratulations to today's Daytona 500 winner, Jamie McMurray!  Surprisingly, two names are absent from the top 15 Daytona 500 results: Jimmy Johnson and Jeff Gordon.  Johnson suffered a broken rear axle in the final laps of the race, while Gordon was 26th after crashing during the final lap.