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New Hampshire International Speedway

"Snake-Bit" Elliott Finishes 24th at Loudon
July 9, 2000 - When your season of late can be described by the old saying, "If anything can go wrong, it will," your name must be Bill Elliott.

Elliott's luck has been awful, to say the least, but in effect, it wasn't all bad today. The final red flag for rain actually salvaged a top-25 finish for Elliott and the crew. It could have been a lot worse, 37th to be exact.

Elliott's car, Cha-Ching, was decent for much of the day but finished outside of the top ten for the first time in four races.

Starting 15th, Elliott lost a couple of positions at the start and was running 17th when the event's first caution flag flew on lap 28. After a solid pit stop by the Drive-Thru Crew, Elliott would restart the race 16th, despite 11 cars choosing not to make a stop.

Elliott remained 15th until the first round of green-flag stops started taking place at lap 83. Elliott started moving up in the running order as the 11 cars had to make a trip to pit road for tires and gas. The bad thing was that Elliott also had to make a stop. Elliott would have to make an unscheduled pit stop on lap 94 to get four fresh Goodyear tires, loosing a lap in the process. After Elliott emerged from the pits, as with Elliott's luck of late, the caution flag would come out at lap 99.

Elliott would restart the race 31st, just ahead of race leader Tony Stewart, as the last car on the tail end of the lead lap. Elliott would hold serve and keep himself in front of Stewart, even passing others in the process, working his way into the top-25 on lap 112.

After a red flag for rain, the event would return to green-flag conditions with Elliott 28th, after choosing to make a pit stop during the caution period. Elliott then started working his way up into the field, running 17th by lap 161. The handling on the 94 Ford started to go away, as Elliott would wash high in the corners and allow cars to pass him underneath.

Elliott would run as high as ninth during the second round of green-flag pit stops. Once Elliott would make his pit stop on lap 213, he would lose a lap to the leaders.

At this time in the race, staying on par with his streak of luck, Elliott's engine started missing and he would lose several positions on the track. By lap 261, Elliott was running (or half-way running) in the 24th position, as rain returned to the Louden track. The final caution flag would fly at lap 266 due to the rain and the second, and final, red flag would appear at lap 272.

Now is where there was a glimmer of a positive note, just before the red flag, Elliott's engine would blow. Elliott would coast down pit road to take the red flag, hoping the race wouldn't restart. It wouldn't.

"I was sitting on pit road blown up," said Elliott. "About 70 or 80 laps before the end it started missing and I lost a lot of ground. The car couldn't run again if they had re-started the race. I barely could just keep it running coming down pit road, so looking on one side of it I guess it did benefit us, but we keep getting bit by different things every week."

If the race had continued, Elliott would not have been able to continue and would have finished 37th, ahead of Robert Pressley. The rain stayed and so did Elliott's top-25 finish.

Elliott fell two spots in the Winston Cup point standings. Elliott now sits in the 18th position with 1769 points, 810 points behind point leader Bobby Labonte.

New Hamsphire Qualifying Quotes
"It's a lot better than what we ran in practice, but we were just trying to get things sorted out," said Bill Elliott. "It was a real tough morning for everyone. Our qualifying effort here at New Hampshire hasn't been that good in the past. It's a sad deal, I feel bad for McDonald's and all the people that's been with us over the last number of years. We've been running so good lately and we haven't had a finish to show how good we've been running. That's unfortunate, but one thing good about this crew I've got right now is they've dug in there and they've worked week-in and week-out regardless of what's happened and that's what you've gotta do in this business."

New Hampshire Notes