Kevin Harvick drives off with a win

Reporting from Daytona Beach, Fla. — If anyone needed an early-season boost in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series this year it was Kevin Harvick.

The Bakersfield native had a miserable 2009, finishing 19th in the point standings, his worst showing in seven years, and he hasn’t won a points-paying race since nipping Mark Martin to win the Daytona 500 in 2007.

But Harvick again demonstrated his prowess at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday night by winning his second consecutive Budweiser Shootout, a non-points exhibition race that precedes the Daytona 500 and marks the unofficial start to the Cup season.

Earlier in the day, Martin, still seeking his first Daytona 500 win, captured the pole position for this year’s 500 and Dale Earnhardt Jr., his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, qualified second and will start alongside Martin on the front row.

The rest of the 500’s 43-car field will be determined in two qualifying races Thursday.

Harvick, 34, won the Shootout during a two-lap overtime when Greg Biffle, who was racing next to Harvick for the lead, spun on the first lap of the overtime.

That sparked a multi-car wreck that brought out the caution flag which, under the overtime rules, immediately ended the race. Kasey Kahne finished second, Jamie McMurray third and Kyle Busch was fourth. Biffle finished 15th.

The overtime was set up by another accident that brought Harvick and others into the pits for two fresh tires. Biffle and Kahne gambled by skipping the pits to gain track position.

“I had [new] tires and he didn’t,” Harvick said of Biffle. “I thought I had an advantage.”

Harvick, who drives for Richard Childress Racing, also bounced back from being sick Thursday and missing the first Shootout practice.

“It’s a lot of fun to win,” he said. But Harvick added: “I know we started last year the same way.”

The Shootout is broken into two segments: The first is 25 laps and, after a brief break, the second is 50 laps. Carl Edwards led the first segment but finished 17th after being collected in the race-ending crash.

“We led a bunch of laps and it’s just too bad it ended that way,” Edwards said.

Martin, 51, became the oldest driver to win the Daytona 500 pole with a lap of 191.188 mph and Earnhardt, the 2004 Daytona winner, followed at 190.913 mph.

While Martin hopes to win his first 500, Earnhardt also hopes for a much improved season after a disastrous 2009 when he did not win a race, finished 25th in points and failed to qualify for NASCAR’s “Chase for the Cup” championship playoff.

Jimmie Johnson, another Hendrick driver, won the Chase last year for his record fourth consecutive championship and Martin finished second.

“I had some really good shots” at winning the 500 “and didn’t get it done, but I think we have our best chance now,” Martin said.

Martin’s pole-winning speed was considerably faster than the 188.001 mph set by pole-sitter Martin Truex Jr. in last year’s Daytona 500, mainly because of a rules change.

NASCAR mandates carburetor-restrictor plates on the cars’ engines at Daytona and Talladega Superspeedway to limit speeds in the interest of safety. But NASCAR recently made the plates slightly less restrictive and effectively gave the cars more horsepower.

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