“Just when I think you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this … and totally redeem yourself!” – Dumb and Dumber
It’s about time.
For the last decade, the historical highlight reel of memorable NASCAR moments at Atlanta Motor Speedway was unbelievably stale.
Sure, there was the historic 1992 season finale where Alan Kulwicki triumphed to claim the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
Flash forward eight years to 2000.
Dale Earnhardt and Bobby Labonte lit the fuse on a half decade of incredible photo finishes that have been obligatorily used every season since. Kevin Harvick and Jeff Gordon followed a year later in Harvick’s emotional first career win.
Then in 2005, Carl Edwards outraced Jimmie Johnson to his first career Cup win.
After that, Johnson and Gordon put on a show in 2011 before Gordon came out on top for his 85th career win.
In the 12 years since?
Goose egg. Nada. Nil.
Any pre-race show ahead of Atlanta featured a rotation of those five highlights.
Then came Sunday (Feb. 25) and the fifth race on the Frankenstein’s monster of a racetrack that no one but Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith’s bank account asked for.
Hours after the race started with a cringeworthy 16-car pileup — the largest in the track’s history — and not long after Austin Cindric blew our minds with a four-wide pass for the lead, Daniel Suarez, Ryan Blaney and Kyle Busch went and broke the internet.
You know something is memorable and viral when FOX Sports shares the Spanish language broadcast version of said moment.
On top of that, you know something is really special when ESPN — a network that typically needs a TV contract to give NASCAR attention outside the Daytona 500, the championship race or a Bubba Wallace win — acknowledges NASCAR on SportsCenter.
As far as I know, that hasn’t happened since Ross Chastain‘s “Hail Melon” in 2022 was the No. 1 play.
Then you have Twitter accounts with more than 100,000 followers signal-boosting the finish and showing a potential interest in the sport.
If one were to trust the public-facing viewing numbers of today’s Twitter — which I don’t — this tweet was seen by two million users…
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