| | HAMPTON, Ga. -- The only thing missing Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway was that poignant "D" lanced into the checkered flag.
Dale Earnhardt to the rescue -- the modern-day Zorro strikes again. When NASCAR was in need, the Intimidator came with the goods.
A month ago, plagued by his loss of invincibility at Daytona International Speedway, Earnhardt went on a tirade about competition and the lack thereof. His exploits eventually hit a sore spot when he summed up the action at the crown jewel track as being "some of the sorriest racing he'd ever seen."
|  | | Dale Earnhardt did something about the lack of excitement in NASCAR this season -- he won Sunday's thrilling Cracker Barrel 500. |
Earnhardt, preaching to the masses of reporters gathered around him at Daytona, gave the sermon beside his mount, saying, "(NASCAR founder) Mr. Bill France Sr. is turning over in his grave."
Freeze that moment. Earnhardt has been perched atop his black horse on a mission to right a wrong ever since.
In Atlanta, with his competition lashing out at the press corps about misconceptions of boredom, Earnhardt did the damage control and the public relations. This time, from the polished pulpit of his Monte Carlo, Earnhardt turned this thumb-twiddling action into nail-biting suspense.
"Now, was that boring?" he railed as he climbed from his car in Atlanta's victory lane.
For Earnhardt, it was a third consecutive top-10 finish, good enough to hoist him into third-place in the season points standings.
"It definitely wasn't a boring race," he said. Earnhardt's 75th Winston Cup win was one of the narrowest in history, winning by one one-hundreth of a second over Bobby Labonte in a 20-lap duel to the finish.
There were no snide remarks about NASCAR's founding father from Earnhardt. This time, the remarks came from fans who rolled over on their couches, took a glance at the television, and were awakened to the sight of side-by-side racing at the front of the field -- the "Hallelujah Chorus" playing in their heads.
Dale Jarrett had predicted this scene earlier in the week during a land-blasting of the media for what he said were unfair assessments on the level of competition in Winston Cup racing. Jarrett took out his frustrations in the Atlanta Media Center, quipping, "unless the 3 (Earnhardt) and the 24 (Jeff Gordon) are up front, the media thinks it's not exciting."
Well? There is precedent for Earnhardt and excitement. After winning a shootout in Talladega that was edge-of-the-seat racing last season, the Intimidator took his traveling road show to Bristol, where, on a warm night in the Tennessee mountains, he punted Terry Labonte on the last lap to win. Add another restrictor-plate waltz at Talladega, and Earnhardt arguably won the three most exciting races of 1999.
In the past two decades, Earnhardt's bumper has been in more action shots than Chuck Norris.
Jimmy Spencer, nicknamed Mr. Excitement, for his days of aggressively finding his way to the front of the field, didn't throw the lack of excitement off on Earnhardt or Gordon. He attributed it to the lack of controversy and the lack of appeal amongst his competitors.
"There's no more controversy," Spencer said. "All these drivers just get out and go, 'Oh well' and walk away. I think they're concerned about their sponsors. I can say whatever I want to say, but the thing is, I think the image a lot of the new drivers are bringing in is very cold -- distant.
"I mean, would you want to date that person? That's the way I look at it. I mean, hell no, I want to date someone who's exciting. That's just the way I feel about it. It's tough. I don't know how to fix this sport. We've lost a little."
NASCAR's top dogs will no doubt be gloating in Earnhardt and Labonte's two-step to the finish line. It was everything they could have hoped for on a day when thousands of grandstand seats were left vacant in Atlanta.
The Cracker Barrel 500 was the best advertisement Darlington Raceway -- site of this weekend's Mall.com 400 -- could have wished for. Back when Earnhardt was intimidating on a weekly basis, he owned the egg-shaped oval in the Pee Dee Region of South Carolina.
And, just like Zorro, where there's distress, he'll be there.
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 Dale Earnhardt talks with RPM 2Night's John Kernan.
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Dale Earnhardt beats Bobby Labonte by a bumper in the Cracker Barrel 500.
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