“It’s just an emotional roller coaster, and it’s nice to be on top of it right now,” McCauley said.  The victory was not unexpected by Penske and Newman, who seemed confident all along they would have a chance to win this race even if few might have considered Newman a threat during a week dominated by the drivers from Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing.  “I felt that we had a car that was capable of winning,” said Newman, who earned $1.5 million for the victory. “You know, I felt that way throughout all the practices.  “All the moons aligned. It happened. It happened right.”  It was not the moons that put Newman in the lead on the final lap. It was Busch, who had worked his way up from the 43rd and last spot on the starting grid to the front when Newman needed him most.  A series of wrecks in the final 39 laps had turned a somewhat uneventful race into yet another panicked rush to the finish. A crash by Casey Mears when he was in third place on Lap 195 of the 200-lap event set up the final three-lap sprint that decided it.  Jeff Burton had the lead but quickly lost it on the restart to Stewart, who held as the white flag fell for the final lap. But Newman went to the high side of the racetrack with Busch following closely behind. Busch could have gone between Newman and Stewart to make a run for himself. Instead, he stuck with his teammate and used the front bumper of his racecar to push Newman coming off Turn 2.  “Kurt came up behind me off of 2 and just gave me the push from heaven,” Newman said.  Stewart, who has won just about everything in Nascar except the Daytona 500, saw Newman and Busch streak past him down the backstretch. There was nothing he could do.  “It’s probably one of the most disappointing moments of my racing career tonight,” he said after finishing third.  He was not the only one to leave disappointed. Fans who hoped Dale Earnhardt Jr. would return to victory lane after a 62-race absence were teased. For a moment, Earnhardt found himself alone in front with 20 laps to go in the Daytona 500. The gasp that followed was from his legion of fans. Maybe Nascar’s powers were holding their collective breath, too.  An Earnhardt victory in the Daytona 500 would have been too much to expect, and perhaps too much to hope for in his first Sprint Cup race with his new Hendrick Motorsports teammates.  But Earnhardt could not hold on to the lead and never threatened in the final laps, finishing ninth.  “I would have liked to have finished better tonight, obviously,” he said. “I think we had a top-five car all day. It is frustrating, but at the end of that race, anything is going to happen and guys get shuffled around. You just kind of take what you can get without wrecking.  “It is frustrating, but we are happy with a top 10. It’ll do.”  For much of the day, it seemed that Kyle Busch, Kurt’s younger brother, would celebrate his first victory as a driver with Joe Gibbs Racing. Busch led for a race-high 86 laps and was among the challengers in the final laps. But he ended up fourth, unable to push his teammate Stewart to the front or make a run at victory on the final lap. Gibbs drivers dominated much of the race, leading for 122 of the first 150 laps.  Newman led only eight laps. Of course, the only one that matters is the last one. As Newman took the lead on the backstretch, his 81-race streak without a victory was about to end.  The celebration had already begun before Newman took the checkered flag.  “My dad was spotting for me,” Newman said. “I could hear the tears dripping going down the back straightaway over the radio.”  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Newman Foils Stewart and Wins Daytona. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Ryan Newman and his No. 12 Dodge blew past Tony Stewart on the final lap and held on to win the 50th running of the Daytona 500.