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Elliott Geared up for 600th Start Bill Elliott, driver of the No. 94 McDonald's Taurus, will join a select group of drivers when he makes his 600th career NASCAR Winston Cup start this weekend in the DieHard 500 at Talladega Superspeedway. Elliott will become the 12th person to reach the 600-start plateau and the sixth active driver to reach that status. The others include: Dave Marcis (2nd all-time with 869), Darrell Waltrip (3rd at 788), Ricky Rudd (6th at 669), Dale Earnhardt and Terry Labonte (tied for 8th at 649). HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT 600 STARTS? IS IT JUST A NUMBER TO YOU OR DOES IT HAVE SOME SIGNIFICANCE? "To me, it's just a number. Whether it's six, 60 or 600, it's just hard to believe it's been that many from my standpoint. That's a lot of races. In the early days I didn't run many races, maybe eight to 10 a year for a long time because I couldn't afford to run any more." DO YOU REMEMBER A LOT ABOUT GETTING READY FOR THAT FIRST START AT ROCKINGHAM AND DOES IT SEEM LIKE YESTERDAY? "I remember a lot about it and it does seem like it was just yesterday, but things have changed so much. Back then there would be a three or four second spread from first to last and now it's two-tenths." WHAT ABOUT THAT FIRST CAR -- THE GRAN TORINO THAT YOU RAN AT ROCKINGHAM? "That thing was a piece of junk. I mean, inspectors wouldn't even come around the thing because they thought they'd pick up some kind of homemade poison or something (laughing). I know you had to have your tetanus shot to work on it (laughing). Richie Panch drove it in his rookie year in '72 and it had been wrecked a bunch of times. Back then they ran basic stock cars. It didn't have the fabricated chassis that eventually worked its way into the sport." WHAT WAS THE THOUGHT PROCESS BEHIND 'HEY WE'RE GOING WINSTON CUP RACING'? "It didn't transpire like that. My dad (George) pushed me in this direction. I didn't feel like I was ready to go, but he wanted me to go run Atlanta and Rockingham and all these places. I was very reluctant to go. I just didn't feel like I was ready. It's something that I look back on and I think he might have saw more in me than I saw myself, saying you need to go and do this. He didn't come right out and say it, it was just one of them deals that was kind of matter of fact, 'We need to do this and we need to do that.' I just felt like his involvement in racing throughout the years that he knew France, Sr. and how NASCAR got started and all the people that were involved, and he realized that this sport was gonna be the one that made it to the next step. I was content at running at Dixie Speedway every Saturday night, but he was like, 'You need to do this.' It's like, he had some cars that he bought...he had one old Torino that he bought from Junie Donlavey that Junie had bought from Holman-Moody or something and daddy said, 'Let's just take this thing and go to Charlotte and try to run the Sportsman race.' For me it was like, 'What am I gonna do, tell you no?'" WAS WINSTON CUP RACING SOMETHING YOU WANTED AND YOUR DAD JUST ACCELERATED THE TIMETABLE OR WERE YOU JUST NAIVE TO IT? "I think I was naive to it then and think I still am today. I mean, I do it not to be in Winston Cup, I do it because I enjoy driving. I guess that's the key to anything. Whether it's here or driving a go-kart on Saturday night or a hobby dirt car, to me, it would be no different. It's like Jeff Burton has said a time or two, whether this race paid a dollar or 10 million dollars you're gonna race just as hard. I just never came into this sport saying, 'This is what I'm gonna be and that's it.' I just came into it doing the best job I could and wherever it fell is wherever it fell. That was it. I mean, when I started it was like, well, we had to run good enough to make races. Then when we made races it was run good enough to finish races. Then it was run back of the pack, middle of the pack and then front of the pack. Everything was a steppingstone. When I look back over the last several years I say, 'Yeah, we've had an opportunity to win a few races the last two or three years, but they haven't come.' That's been disappointing to some extent, but still, all I've gotta do is look back 15 years ago or so and say, 'You didn't win a race at all for a period of time.' You realize there's a learning curve and you roll with it, keep your head on straight, and keep at it." IS IT APPROPRIATE THAT YOUR 600TH START WILL BE AT TALLADEGA BECAUSE YOU'VE HAD A LOT OF GOOD AND BAD MEMORIES OF THAT PLACE. "My 500th start was at Bristol, so that's going from one end of the spectrum to the other isn't it? I've had some good times there and, all in all, with the ups and downs I've had at Talladega it hasn't been all that bad. I've been pretty fortunate there and a lot of good has happened to me there." WAS THAT THE TRACK WHICH HELPED CREATE THE AWESOME BILL MONICKER? "Yeah, between Talladega and Daytona. But for what we did in this race in '85, that was probably what stuck with the fans as far as remembering what transpired and how we ran that day." WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THAT 1985 WINSTON 500? "That was during the good ol’ days. We had everybody covered and it was one of those races that we were fast and everybody was doing everything they could to beat us. Everything was just perfect and I think everybody kind of overcompensated and was trying some crazy stuff because a lot cars blew up and fell out. There were really a lot of motor problems because it was one of those races where they ran so fast for so long, regardless of what I ran." WHAT CAUSED YOU TO GET TWO LAPS DOWN? "We had one of the return lines to the oil tank at the oil pump come loose. I came in, they tightened her up, and went back out." WAS YOUR THOUGHT PROCESS KIND OF LIKE, "OK, I CAN MAKE IT UP?" "No, my thought process was, ‘I guess it’s gonna be a bad day.’ But everybody fell out. I think the biggest thing was that I had a really good car by itself. Back then they didn’t dictate spoiler or anything. Cale was probably the next best car, but he was trying to run by himself and he had no help because everyone else was torn up. I was running so good that he couldn’t run with me, so it was wild." THAT TRACK THOUGH WAS ALSO CLOSE TO HOME. "It really is. You have a lot of people -- you had Bobby Allison and Donnie and all that group that ran back then and Davey was still coming along as far as the Alabama Gang. I was the only guy from Georgia and with Atlanta being that close, it was really just as close for me to go to Talladega as it was to Atlanta." DID YOU NOTICE AN INCREASE IN ATTENTION FROM THE FANS AFTER THAT '85 RACE? "Really it started at Daytona, but after that Talladega was kind of the next big step and then Darlington was the huge step. It all was a steppingstone from Daytona to Talladega to Darlington." BUDDY BAKER IS STILL KNOWN FOR BEING THE FIRST DRIVER TO HIT 200 MPH AND ONE OF THE THINGS YOU'LL LIKELY BE REMEMBERED FOR IS HAVING THE FASTEST SPEED IN NWC HISTORY (212.809 MPH IN QUALIFYING FOR THE 1987 WINSTON 500). HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL? "I guess what impresses me the most in looking back on all that is if you go back and look at the cars we did that in versus what we've got today, they were pretty primitive. I mean, you didn't have time to go to the wind tunnel with every car and you didn't have all this other stuff. You had bias ply tires and everything else, but it's a whole different ballgame today. You didn't have the technology you've got now shockwise or enginewise." AS YOU GO BACK TO TALLADEGA THIS WEEK, ARE YOU MORE OPTIMISTIC AFTER RUNNING SO WELL AT DAYTONA? "It makes it a little bit easier to go there because my restrictor-plate racing hasn't been too good the last several years, but Daytona was a lot of fun." WHAT ABOUT THE RULE CHANGE THERE FOR THIS RACE? "I just wish they'd make their minds up. Golly, do something and leave it alone, especially at mid-year because it just gets so hard to deal with. I don't know what the answer is, I honestly don't. I don't know what they're trying to achieve." WHAT WAS YOUR TAKE ON THE WAY YOUR CAR HANDLED AT DAYTONA? DID NASCAR NEED TO MAKE THIS CHANGE? "I didn't think so, but I ran pretty good. For some of the other guys, though, they thought so. Like I said, I don't know what they're trying to achieve. If they want to be six-wide every lap, then get us IROC cars."
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