Intimidator's final Atlanta win one battle for the ages (cont'd)

Some say fate played a role in the outcome that time. Harvick said maybe not. He said close finishes aren't surprising at AMS because the layout of the racing surface lends itself to them.

"The track gives you a lot of options to move around," he said. "When you get behind or the guy's taking your line in front of you, from the top to the bottom of the race track it gives you a chance. That's why you see so many of those races play out like they do."

Emotional victory

Kevin Harvick recalls his first Cup victory just weeks after Dale Earnhardt's death.

• Video: Harvick looks back

Carl Edwards, who participated in a similar finish in 2005, beating Jimmie Johnson with a last-lap pass to get his first Cup win by a scant .028 seconds, agreed with Harvick.

"I'd say you could probably get by a guy on the bottom, too," he said. "Jimmie was on the bottom, so I took the outside."

Both winning cars in 2000 and 2001 were owned by Richard Childress, who like many in the sport finds it difficult to explain the similarities in the way those two races turned out.

"It's so incredible," he said. "We have both of those cars in the museum. We have the video from both of them, and it's almost scary when you sit there and listen to the commentary and listen to how Dale won the race, and then to watch the video and listen to the commentary on the 29 [Harvick] and the 24 [Gordon] and look at how much each one beat the other by. It's really eerie how it is. It's one of those things that 'How could it be?'"

Childress said he had the same feeling both years as he watched the battles unfold.

"The last couple of laps when Kevin was out there running and when Jeff made that run on him I thought it was over," he said. "Same with Bobby, but Dale had enough momentum on the top to beat him."

Childress said he believes the track's layout tends to favor the driver on the outside groove in a last-lap shootout.

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"You just build up a lot of momentum up there and it shoots you down the straightaway," he said. "If you're on the bottom, you'd better have a lot of grip."

The 2000 Atlanta win is often ranked as one of Earnhardt's top 10 victories, a decision that Childress backs "because of the way he won it."

But Childress also looks at the win as evidence that Earnhardt had a lot of racing left in him at that point in his career.

"We finished second in points in 2000 [to Bobby Labonte] and had a heck of a year," he said. "Coming into 2001 we were as prepared to win the championship as we ever had been. Dale and I talked about it off and on that winter and even during the [2001] Daytona 500 week and when he was at Daytona running the road race."

He said the proof of that preparation was the fact that a rookie Harvick in just his third Cup start took Earnhardt's car and beat the veteran Jeff Gordon.

"That and the fact that Kevin missed a race and still finished ninth in points and won two races," he said.

But the real significance of that 2001 win at Atlanta was that it helped NASCAR get on the road to recovery from losing Earnhardt.

"The thing I remember about 2001 other than losing Dale was Steve Park winning Rockingham [in a Dale Earnhardt Inc. car] and Kevin coming back and winning Atlanta in the style he did," Childress said. "That was the medicine the race fans and all of us needed."

Also:
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• A young Brian France sorts out winner of '78 Dixie 500
• Greatest race of all time? 1992 Hooters 500 had it all