DOVER, Del. (May 31, 2008) – Veteran NASCAR driver Bill Elliott left Dover International Speedway immediately after practice Saturday to head for Georgia where he was scheduled to be inducted into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame on the eve of the Best Buy 400 at the “Monster Mile.”
“I'm really looking forward to it,” the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup champion said Saturday. “By this time, I thought I'd be a little bit more retired, but I still enjoy driving. I still enjoy being around this stuff, so it's an honor to be included as part of this hall of fame.
“You look back on your career and a lot of the successes that you did have and it's pretty amazing at the end of the day, I mean, when you really sit down and look at it. In the era we accomplished those things, I feel like it makes our family real proud because we came in not an established entity and built something in a pretty short period of time. So, when you look at the whole scheme of things, what we did was pretty special.”
Elliott and his brothers, Ernie and Dan, grew up around the north Georgia short tracks. The youngest of the three brothers made his Cup debut in 1976, driving a Ford owned by his father, George. He drove for the family team through 1981 when it had reached the end of its financial rope. It was then that Benny Parsons put the Georgia family together with Michigan businessman Harry Melling, who purchased the operation. With Melling as the team owner, the Elliotts catapulted to stardom, winning the inaugural Winston Million, 11 races and 11 poles in 1985, and then claimed the series title three years later. Elliott left Melling at the end of 1991 and joined Junior Johnson for the 1992 season. He remained with Johnson through 1994, then formed his own team, which he sold to Ray Evernham at the end of 2000.
During Elliott's career, the father of three collected 44 Cup victories, 175 top-five and 320 top-10 finishes, and 55 poles.
A Dawsonville, Ga., native, the 52-year-old Elliott admitted that being honored in his home area made the Hall of Fame induction even more special.
“It’s a little bit out of the racing flow as far as when you look at Daytona and Charlotte and what it is to racing today,” said Elliott, who qualified his Wood Brothers Ford 24th for Sunday's Best Buy 400. “But if you look at the state of Georgia as a whole and how much it influenced racing early on, it’s pretty big. I didn’t realize how much racing started (in Georgia) until reading some of the stuff that went on around Dawsonville and Atlanta in the '20s, '30s and '40s; how much influence that area had and how big it was, and how much just a few things would have made a lot of difference.”
Elliott will be back in Dover in time for the NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers' meeting, which is scheduled for noon on Sunday at the 1-mile, concrete track.
06-01-2008, 12:28 AM
Linear Mode
