The Closest Finish in Auto Racing History

At the risk of driving F1 and Indy Car fans crazy, a search for the two closest finishes in any racing series on four wheels turned up two memorable NASCAR races, and two brothers who are making their indelible mark on NASCAR.

Looking back at the closest finishes on four wheels, NASCAR takes the honor on more than one level. The funny thing about the two closest finishes is that a Busch brother was involved in each one. Just this year at the in the Camping World Truck Series Mountain Dew 250 at Talladega Superspeedway, Aric Amirola was gunning for the win that might have, in hindsight, helped win his first Camping World Truck Series Championship.

Amirola raced hard the last few laps with Kyle Busch and Johnny Sauter close on his bumper. Coming out of the dog leg and racing hard to the finish line Kyle Busch, in his classic "Rowdy Busch" style threw all caution out of the window net and almost wrecked as he managed to edge out Amirola by .002 seconds. Sauter was just a thousandth of a second behind first and second, taking third place.

There was a little controversy after that race and additional analysis of scoring timers made NASCAR recall the two one thousandths call and adjust it to .003. That left the prior closest finish in auto racing still intact.

It was back in 2003. Ricky Craven and Kurt Busch were racing for the win at Darlington in the Carolina Dodge Dealers 500. It was the elder Busch's bad boy days, back when "Mr. Excitement" Jimmy Spencer wanted to punch Kurt out. Three laps to go and the two cars came out of turn four racing hard. Craven raced under Busch but could not hold his car down and put Busch's Roush Ford up in the wall giving it a 'Darlington Stripe'.

Craven took the lead, but Busch came back down under Craven's #32 Tide sponsored machine and retook the lead. Craven tried Busch high and low but could not get past the Ford's rear bumper. With half a straight to go Craven dove below Busch and got door to door. They bumped twice down the front stretch and as they crossed the finish line Craven took the win by .002 seconds. That time went down in racing history.

There are fans that would argue that F1 has the closest competition or that Indy Car is the most competitive. The lighter cars are that much faster and handle so much better than the bulky NASCAR full body cars and trucks. Indy finally had a closer finish in 2007 but it was in the Indy Pro Series. Alex Lloyd came across the line to win the season finale by 0.0005 of a second.

It could actually be argued that Sam Hornish's victory over Al Unser Jr. in 2002 at the Delphi Indy 300 at Chicagoland Speedway was the closest at a difference of .0024, but Indy is the only series that times out to the fourth decimal, leaving the NASCAR record at .0004 closer.

The closest F1 finish of all time was at the United States Grand Prix in 2002 when Rubens Barrichello finished 0.011 seconds ahead of Michael Schumacher. Formula One purists will argue that the classic races may have been closer, but F1 did not time past the second decimal way back when.