The 2000 version of the AutoZone Nationals presented by Pennzoil will go down as one of the wildest events of that or any other season. It was packed with thrills and spills to the very end.

In the Top Fuel final, Larry Dixon's chassis collapsed in front of the driver's compartment and sent him flying into the air as he approached the finish line as the clear winner. He landed in Gary Scelzi's lane, disqualifying himself and making a reluctant winner of Scelzi, who had smoked the tires and shut down.

Ron Capps snapped out of a 46-race winless streak in Funny Car, and two of the four racing Coughlin brothers, Jeg Jr. and Mike, won Pro Stock and Pro Stock Truck, respectively. With the victory, Jeg clinched the Winston championship in just his third Professional season, and Mike's victory was his first since winning the 1999 U.S. Nationals.

Though he lost the Pro Stock final, Scott Geoffrion was a major part of a record weekend. He set the national e.t. mark at 6.809, marking the first time since 1979 that a Mopar Hemi held it.

Two weeks after the mercury in Memphis topped 106 degrees, participants were greeted with morning temperatures in the 30s and a Sunday high of 53. The record cold led to some of the most amazing runs in the history of the carbureted Pro Stockers and Pro Stock Trucks and huge fires and crashes in the fuel ranks.

Scelzi, forced to clear his mind of his own past accidents in Topeka to win there a week earlier, was in the left lane at Memphis Motorsports Park, but two of his opponents in the right lane had more violent accidents than he had in the past. The first and most frightening involved rival Tony Schumacher, whom Scelzi was battling all season for the Winston championship.

The rear wing on Schumacher's car came off just before the finish line in last-shot qualifying, rendering him a passenger and sending him over the wall at nearly 300 mph. Schumacher suffered a fractured left leg and did not return to the driver's seat until the final event of 2000.

Scelzi shook that off to run low 4.6s in every round until the final, where he smoked the tires and watched Dixon drive away, only to be the victim of another ugly accident.

"I realized that I was going to crash and that whatever was going to happen was going to happen," said Dixon, who suffered a broken bone in his left leg but returned to racing at the next event. "I thought back to my wreck in Bakersfield, Calif. [in January 1995, before his rookie season], and wondered if I'd be awake through the whole thing."

Scelzi's victory was his eighth of the season, breaking the single-season Top Fuel mark that he established with his Topeka triumph seven days earlier.

In Funny Car, which was marred by horrendous fires in last-shot qualifying by non-qualifiers Terry Haddock and Louis Sweet, Capps secured a grossly overdue first win in two years when Whit Bazemore's blower banged before half-track in their side-by-side final-round race. In his four qualifying and four eliminations runs, Capps ran a 5-flat and seven fours, including a 4.92 — his best of eliminations — in the final.

Scelzi's victory — his record-setting eighth of the season — and the crashes of his two closest points competitors gave him and the Team Winston camp a clear path to their third Winston Top Fuel championship.

The victory was Capps' first since the 1998 Parts America Nationals in Topeka — he had lost his last seven finals after winning seven of 10 to open his Funny Car career. Bazemore won four of his first five, including the 1997 U.S. Nationals, but had dropped seven of his last nine, including the 2000 U.S. Nationals.

Jeg Coughlin Jr. officially clinched the Winston championship that most had conferred upon him following his amazing streak of six wins in seven NHRA national events to open the season. He and Scott Geoffrion both responded with .435 lights in the final before Coughlin edged him in one of the quicker side-by-side races in Pro Stock annals, 6.87 to 6.89.

Geoffrion qualified on the pole for the first time in more than five years with the quickest pass in history and just missed becoming the first Pro Stock driver to run in the 6.70s. The Dodge driver, who made the first lap in the 7.0s for the Wayne County Speed Shop Dodge team at the 1992 Keystone Nationals, paced the field with a 6.809 and crossed the finish line on that pass with a tremendous top-end speed of 201.43 mph. The 16-car field featured a 6.880 bump, which tied the all-time Pro Stock record. Warren Johnson, who then owned Pro Stock's five fastest speeds, qualified just 11th, and he sealed the title for Coughlin by beating second-place Ron Krisher in the first round of eliminations.

The victory was Coughlin's 10th of the 2000 season, more than anyone that year — one more than Funny Car star John Force and two more than Scelzi. He needed to win two of the season's three remaining events to eclipse Darrell Alderman's nine-year-old single-season record of 11 Pro Stock wins, which he failed to achieve.

In Pro Stock Truck, Coughlin's older brother, Mike, 34, won when Steve Johns red-lighted in the final and shut down not far off the starting line. Coughlin ran two 7.44s and a 7.43 in eliminations — this against an incoming all-time record of 7.46. Greg Stanfield led qualifying with a 7.43, but soon-to-be two-time Winston champ Bob Panella Jr. ran even quicker in the first round, 7.42, against a red-lighting Mark Whisnant.

Coughlin also won the quickest side-by-side truck race in history, 7.44 to 7.43, in the opening round against Scott Perin in a rematch of the 1999 U.S. Nationals final.