Some NASCAR fans might call Saturday’s Wonderful Pistachios 400 at Richmond International Raceway ugly. Others may call it exciting – the end certainly was.

Kevin Harvick – who led for half the race – took the lead for the final time after the track’s record-tying 15th caution and fought off a furious charge by Carl Edwards in the final 15 laps to claim his fourth Sprint Cup victory of the season and the 18th of his career.

Harvick credited his pit crew for giving him the chance to win.

“Everybody did a great job,” Harvick said. “The guys on the pit road had just a great last pit stop and were able to get us the track position. I struggled on the restarts getting going with the races that we had, so to be in control of that last restart, I felt like that was pretty important to get going.”

Harvick and Edwards battled for control for most of the last 300 laps, but with 20 laps to go, Jeff Gordon slipped into the lead. Gordon’s advantage didn’t last long, however.

Paul Menard spun into the grass along the front stretch on lap 384, sparking the final caution. Gordon hit some debris and needed to pit. Harvick and Edwards did, too, but Harvick was the one to get out first and get prime position on the restart.

Even though Edwards was on his bumper going into the final lap, Harvick stubbornly held his position to claim the checkered flag.

“That was a tough race not to win,” Edwards said. “I feel like we had the car beat and if we had another lap or two we would have been all over Harvick there.”

Gordon said he was partially the blame in losing the race out of that final pit stop.

“We didn’t have the best of pit stops,” Gordon said. “I didn’t do them any favors. I didn’t get into the box as good as I needed to. We got beat off pit road, plain and simple.”

The race got ugly early. The first caution came out on lap two when Andy Lally spun into the wall on turn 1. The second caution came out six laps later, when Dave Reutimann tagged Clint Bowyer, sending Bowyer into the wall.

As Bowyer rebounded off the wall, his car ensnared several others – including those driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr and Denny Hamlin, both of whom needed a solid finish to claim a berth in the Chase. Their cars were beat up pretty bad, but their crews fought hard to keep them on the track. In the end, both qualified for the Chase.

By lap 51, three more cautions had been issued – Earnhardt himself triggered the fourth caution after he spun Marcus Ambrose into the wall – and television announcers began referring to the race as a case of yellow fever.

The tenth caution was issued on lap 185, and there was another flurry of cautions between laps 284 and 309, but things calmed down significantly for the final quarter of the race.

Harvick’s crew chief, Gil Martin, said the past couple of weeks represents a significant turnaround from a summer slump.

“We started off the season really well. We had good consistency, good runs, and we were able to put together good runs all day long,”  Martin said. “But during the middle of the summer, to be quite frank, we’ve run like crap. … We kind of got off our game trying some things that probably we shouldn’t have.”

Edwards said he’ll recover from coming in second. He, Harvick and Gordon have a lot to think about in the final 10 races of the season.

“Well, once I get over the frustration of not winning this thing I’m going to be pretty excited about how fast our team is,” Edwards said. “We really turned things around tonight. That’s the best we’ve run on the short track in years, so that was huge. … It was a fun race. I did have a good time, and am read to go get this Chase on.”