The next time you go out and buy a Powerball or other big payoff lottery ticket, you might want to take Mike Harmon along as a good-luck charm.

It's unlikely there's a luckier person walking the NASCAR garages these days -- and Harmon will be the first to admit it. It was a year ago Friday that Harmon dodges a proverbial bullet -- in this case, a wall -- then got up, dusted himself off and walked away.

"It was on August 22nd at exactly 11:15 in the morning," Harmon recalled with vivid clarity. "You don't forget something like that."

The Busch Series driver was practicing at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, which he visits this weekend for the second time since last year's miracle -- and it was nothing short of that in almost everyone's eyes -- when something in his car broke (he thinks either the steering box snapped or he suffered a sudden flat in the right front tire), sending Harmon into the Turn 4 wall at nearly 100 mph.

"We had just come out of the pits; we hadn't even made a full lap yet," Harmon said.

That's when the first of two elements of nothing short of sheer luck came into play. First, Harmon hit the wall right where it merges with a fence that had been left partially unlocked. Fortunately, the fact that the wall/fence combo moved and gave the impact of Harmon's crash some cushion, helped minimize any injury to Harmon. He also was aided by a head and neck restraint device.

Then, less than three seconds later, as his Chevrolet bounced off the wall/fence and came to a stop in the middle of the frontstretch, with the side of his car peeled back like a can, exposing Harmon and the entire driver compartment, he looked up to see fellow driver Johnny Sauter headed right for him, unable to avoid the wreckage.

	Mike Harmon walked away from this horrific wreck at Bristol, Tenn.

Sauter broadsided Harmon's car, obliterating what little hadn't been after the initial crash. Almost everyone at BMS that day who witnessed the incredible chain of events thought Harmon was a goner as a result. But the truth be known: Sauter's car missed Harmon and the driver's compartment cocoon by mere inches.

So what does the Alabama native do? He climbs out of the remaining skeletal driver's compartment, and walks away from what has become known in racing lore as arguably the worst crash in NASCAR history. If you're ever down in Talladega, Ala., at the International Motor Sports Hall of Fame, you can see for yourself what's left -- or, in this case, what very little is left -- of Harmon's car.

That he survived with nothing more than a cut on his right side from some jagged metal that tore loose in the crash, plus a few other bruises, has made Harmon known as the luckiest man in NASCAR racing today.

"I feel very blessed to be able to survive an accident that was that severe," Harmon said. "I was very fortunate that the car hit me, exposed, and I was just real lucky and blessed ... and here we are a year later, ready to go back there with another race car."

But as wild a ride as that three-second sequence was, as much as it changed Harmon's life, as bad as it looked when played back to him on a TV monitor (a TV crew just happened to be at the nearly-empty track that day, doing some advance setup work for that weekend), Harmon didn't shake in fear at seeing what he went through.

No, in typical racer fashion, he was back out on the race track later the same day in another car. It's no wonder why NASCAR history is filled with such rich stories of legends and lore, and Mike Harmon's tale has been included as one of the greatest tales of survival and good fortune that any driver has ever been able to tell.

"I've had a lot of adversities, but I just put it behind me and went on," Harmon said. "After I came back (from the hospital), I couldn't wait to get back on the race track and get in another car and get back out there and do what I'm used to doing. I was back and suited up within three hours and ready to go forward. In fact, I was ready to go before they had the track cleaned up and in shape to go again.

"You've just got to get back on the horse that throws you; that's how I approached it. I didn't want to sleep on it, I wanted to get back in the car. Once I was buckled in, that was history. I survived that deal and am real thankful for being spared that day, but I couldn't wait to go back in and get out there again."

While he has no trouble talking about the wreck -- Harmon has been interviewed by dozens of reporters in recent weeks in preparation for this weekend's return to Bristol -- it's also something that the 45-year-old veteran driver doesn't spend much time dwelling on, only recalling the episode when he's asked questions about it.

"Unless somebody brings it up, I don't even think about it," Harmon said. "I don't mind talking about it because they're curious and it shocked the world when I stood up, got out of the car on the right side and walked off. And then, when I started looking around (at the wreckage), I knew how lucky and blessed I was at that point because there wasn't anything left there except my seat and a few (protective) bars on the left side of the door."

	Harmon's crash occurred during a Busch Series practice.

A lot of similarities have been drawn between Harmon's initial impact into the fence before Sauter hit the caroming wreckage, and the crash that claimed the life of Winston Cup legend Dale Earnhardt at Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 18, 2001. Harmon's car hit the wall in almost the exact same manner as Earnhardt's -- nearly head-on -- albeit about 90 mph slower than when Earnhardt hit the Turn 4 wall on the final lap of the Daytona 500.

"People do talk about it," Harmon said. "Of course, Dale was one of my heroes and a great ambassador for the sport and we lost a part of the sport that day. But, he hit the wall and the wall didn't give at all, and his body and the car took all the shock. Where I hit the wall, it was kind of on the end (of the turn), and instead of sending all the shock to my body, the car just ripped apart and dissipated the energy. I didn't take as much of a hit as he did."

One would think that Harmon might dwell a bit on his return to Bristol, but not him. He's more concerned about doing well in Friday's Food City 250 Busch Series race than replaying his wreck again.

"We're trying to move up in the points," said Harmon, whose first return to Bristol was back in March, when he finished 40th in the Busch race there after being involved in yet another -- and fortunately for him, far less serious, wreck. "I'm 24th in the driver points and 29th in owner points, and we're really worried about coming out of there with a good finish and running good all day. I'm a lot more concerned about that than I am as far as going back and being involved in another real horrific accident.

"As long as I'm healthy and I've got an opportunity to race, I feel blessed and lucky to be able to race every weekend, and I'm going to continue."

Jerry Bonkowski covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at Motorsportwriter@MSN.com