Top 30 Memories from 26 Years of Race Weekends at Atlanta Motor Speedway: 22 Days left!

Top 30 Memories from 26 Years of Race Weekends at Atlanta Motor Speedway: 22 Days left!

by Mike Fuori on Saturday, August 13, 2011 at 2:43pm ·

#22: The Greatest Finish I Never Saw

Ask anyone in our group and they will tell you that I HATE missing any racing held at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and I will vilify people who leave the race early to “beat the traffic”.  I give our buddy Stan a hard time about it every year, because he is usually one of the first to leave.  If you can’t already tell, I’m a little obsessed with NASCAR and racing in Atlanta (please don’t ask my wife how obsessed I am).  When we go to the track, I never want to leave, and only once have I ever let something like bad weather convince me to stay home (only because I knew there would never be a car on the track that weekend).  But the thing I hate the most is spending all weekend camping out at the track, and having to leave to “beat the traffic”.

In November of 2001, I begrudgingly agreed to leave early when my dad suggested it.  Jerry Nadeau had a huge lead, and we were only two or three laps from the checkers.  It looked like a done deal and while I always like it when an underdog like Nadeau wins a race, I had to be back in Tallahassee at school the next day, and it seemed like the right thing to do.

We pulled out of our spot and turned on the radio for MRN’s race broadcast, and drove through the turn 3 tunnel and out of the infield.  Right about now, the white flag was flying and it was the last lap.  25 seconds later, Nadeau was out of gas in the final turn, limping toward the finish line and wiggling his car back and forth to try to pick up a little extra gas, but Bobby Labonte flew by and took the lead and the win at the last second, quite literally.  And the crowd went wild.  I know because I’ve seen the footage… not because I was there.  I missed it.  And I’ve been giving my dad crap about it ever since.