Some races are defined by finishes: victory decided by a fraction of a fraction of a second, the last win by an aging champion, the first win by a kid with years in front of him.
Some races are defined by history. Records are set, championships are won and lost. Some races are defined by triumph, others by tragedy.
Some races are defined by moments: daring last-lap passes, breathtaking saves, celebrations. The moments people never forget. The ones that make the highlight reels for years to come. And sometimes, the ones they’ll never, ever live down.
The Race: 2000 Lysol 200
Road-course specialists have been a part of NASCAR for decades. They’re drivers who rarely, if ever, race on ovals and who step in for road races. They sometimes take over for a driver who struggled on road courses, sometimes in an additional car run by a team hoping to score some extra prize money.
Ron Fellows was the consummate road-course ringer. He never ran more than five races in a season in any NASCAR national series, but he found plenty of success, particularly in what was then the Busch Series (now NASCAR Xfinity Series), winning four times, three for owner Joe Nemechek. On this particular June Sunday at Watkins Glen International, Fellows led three times for a race-high 36 laps to beat another road specialist, Butch Leitzinger, to the checkers.
The race was slowed by five cautions, all single-car incidents. The first came on lap 12 when David Green slid into a gravel trap. Fellows, who led the opening 13 laps from the pole in the yellow and purple No. 87, gave up the lead by pitting for fuel.
PJ Jones took over the lead for seven laps before Tom Hubert took over on lap 20 after an aggressive pass going into turn 1. Fellows, who had to race his way from mid pack after the pit stop, was marching through the field. He then retook the lead from Hubert when Hubert ran wide in the first turn.
Three laps later, Hubert overdrove the same corner again, this time spinning off the track and into the sand trap, bringing out the second caution. This time Fellows stayed out to keep the lead, which he held until the next caution flew on lap 47 for rookie Jimmie Johnson, who’d been having a quietly solid race until a brake failure ended his day in violent fashion.
Ron Hornaday Jr. led the next 11 laps before Leitzinger took over under the next caution (for a spin by NASCAR Hall of Famer Mike Stefanik) on lap 59 to lead the next 13 laps, the only laps he would lead in NASCAR competition.
Fellows was the class of the field though. He caught Leizinger with 11 laps to go and passed him entering the backstretch chicane for what would be the race win, hanging on through a restart with one lap to go after a solo incident with Lyndon Amick. Fellows had some damage to his car that slowed him in the closing laps, but Leitzinger and Kevin Harvick couldn’t get by before time ran out. It was Fellows’ second win in the Busch Series at age 40; he’d go back-to-back in Busch Series competition at The Glen a year later.
By the Numbers
Race winner: Ron Fellows
Runner-up: Butch Leitzinger
Polesitter: Fellows
Margin of victory: .901 seconds
Time of race: 2:13:04
Cautions: five for 11 laps
Lead changes: six among five drivers
Lead lap finishers: 27 of 44
Running at finish: 39 of 44
DNQ: Michael Ritch, Dale Quarterley, Jamie Guerrero, John Preston
Notable: The race was part of a stand-alone weekend on June 24 and 25 for the then-Busch and Craftsman Truck Series. Trucks ran on Saturday and Busch on Sunday. The Cup Series raced on the same Sunday at Sonoma Raceway. Fellows also finished third in the CTS race that weekend. Drivers included future Cup champions Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson (plus Kurt Busch in the CTS race). Eventual series champion Jeff Green finished 10th, his ninth straight top-10 finish in what became a 14-race top-10 streak, his only finish outside the top five in that same span. Current Cup Series Vice President of Competition Elton Sawyer finished seventh.
Why Fans Are Still Talking About It
Fellows drove a beautiful race. It’s too bad that most people barely remember it.
Why? Because one rookie driver, a relative unknown with just two top 10s to his name at the time, crashed so spectacularly that it still makes the Watkins Glen highlight reel more than two decades later. Absolutely thrilled to still be alive after it was over, the kid climbed onto the roof of his car and celebrated.
Twenty-four years down the road, everybody knows that kid’s name because he’s a seven-time Cup champion. But on that day, Jimmie Johnson was just a rookie who had one hell of a scary ride.
Johnson’s No. 92 suddenly veered right as something clearly broke on the car and got into the grass on the inside of turn 1.
As any driver will tell you, sliding through grass does nothing to scrub speed, and without brakes, Johnson simply shot through the grassy area, getting airborne just enough as he crossed back over the track to clear the deep sand that’s meant to stop cars that leave the track before they hit the barrier behind it.
Johnson plowed into the Armco barrier hard enough to bend it a couple of feet. What saved the youngster was a double row of huge Styrofoam blocks in front of the metal Armco. Johnson’s car was buried in the fence almost to the rear quarter panels, but the foam and Armco barrier did their job.
Flying toward the white Styrofoam blocks at what must have felt like both the blink of an eye and an eternity all at once, Johnson thought they were a concrete wall. Terrified, he slammed into them, foam flying everywhere. He’d say later that his spontaneous celebration was purely spurred by adrenaline and sheer gratefulness for being alive after the accident.
Not unlike the poor skier who fell off the ski jump every week on the old Wide World of Sports to illustrate the agony of defeat, Johnson, an 83-time Cup winner, has had to endure that crash popping up like a bad penny once a year ever since. His air time still gets airtime when the Cup Series goes to Watkins Glen.
After a Hall of Fame career, Johnson is, at least for a moment each summer, still that kid with the goofy hair who starred in “that crash at the Glen.” And everyone knows exactly what crash that is.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.