Brickyard 400
Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Persistence Pays off, Elliott Finishes 3rd at Indy
August 5, 2000 - Finally! After many weeks of great runs turned sour, Elliott and the Drive-Thru Crew were rewarded with a solid top-three finish. Elliott summed up his feelings in five words, "I'm just tickled to death."

Throughout the 2000 season, Elliott has been provided with strong cars, capable of winning races but has had his share of bad luck and saw far too many good runs turn bad. Today, it all came together; a great car, a great pit crew, and a great driver all combined to put the 94 Ford in a position to win at the end.

Elliott qualified the McDonald's Taurus in the seventh position on Thursday, his fifth top-ten qualifying effort in the seven races ran at the Brickyard.

Elliott jumped to the sixth spot on the first lap and worked his way to fourth by lap six. The event's first caution flag would fly on lap 14 with Elliott holding on to fourth place. The Drive-Thru Crew would fuel and change four tires on the car and return Elliott to the race in the fifth position.

Elliott would move back to fourth by lap 21 and would start posting the fastest speeds on the track. A few of Elliott's leading lap speeds...

Lap  Speed
 22  171.949 mph
 23  171.896 mph
 26  169.852 mph

The McDonald's Ford was still a little on the loose side and would fall back to sixth on lap 48. Elliott would eventually work his way back into the top five where he would run until a green-flag pit stop on lap 84. Again, the crew tried to tighten the car up with air pressure, putting a 1/2 pound of air in the right-front tire. Elliott would gain a spot with a nice stop by the Drive-Thru Crew.

Although some ten seconds behind the leader, Elliott was now running fourth with a better handling car and again started posting the fastest laps on the track, cutting in to the huge lead. Here are more of Elliott's leading lap speeds...

Lap  Speed
 94  169.418 mph
 95  167.769 mph
 96  169.692 mph
 97  169.214 mph
100  168.735 mph
110  168.450 mph
111  168.511 mph

Now a few lap cars started hindering the progress of the 94, allowing the leaders to extend their lead.

"It was pretty tough," said Elliott of attempting to pass. "I mean, even the slow guys were hard to pass. You know, you get the tires used up a little bit. You could be three or four-tenths faster than the guy in front of you and it was so hard to pass when you got up to him. You'd inch to him and inch to him, but that's the way it goes."

The leader was now 8.2 seconds ahead of the third-place Elliott with the laps winding down. With dark clouds threatening, Elliott could have used a caution to have a shot at the win.

"I don't know," said Elliott. "I needed the car to be a little bit better, but I tell you, it wasn't bad all day long. I felt like I was pretty good. If it would have been a short run it would have been a good shootout, but we'll never know now."

The rain would stay away and the seventh Brickyard 400 would end with Elliott a solid third.

"When the sun went in and the track got cooler, that was when I was the best, but the last set of tires I got just a little bit off again and never could get it back up. I'm tickled to death, man, this is just like winning the race," said a happy Elliott.

Elliott crossed the finish line 8.174 seconds behind race-winner Bobby Labonte and 1.307 seconds ahead of fourth-place Jerry Nadeau. Elliott's third-place finish equals his best finish of the season, a third at the season-opening Daytona 500.

Elliott gained a whopping five spots in the point standings, moving up from 19th to 14th with 2097 points. Elliott is 908 points behind the point leader Bobby Labonte and 95 points behind Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 13th.

Brickyard 400 Post-Race Press Conference
Post-Race Press Conference

Brickyard 400 Qualifying Quotes
"We really picked it up from practice and I think that's what it's all about," said Bill Elliott after his qualifying lap.
Qualifying Quotes

Indy Notes