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Elliott Home at Atlanta Motor Speedway History will always show Bill Elliott’s first NASCAR Winston Cup Series start at the North Carolina Motor Speedway in 1976. However, it wasn’t his first race. Three months earlier, Elliott loaded a race car built – financially and physically – by his family to the Atlanta Motor Speedway. He failed to make the starting lineup in his Winston Cup debut, but the experience was enough to fuel the determination that, 25 years later, made him one of the sport’s icons. The Elliotts could have picked any other raceway on the busy circuit, but they wanted to embark on their Winston Cup career at the speedway they call home. Located in the southern suburbs of Atlanta, the Speedway wasn’t far from Elliott’s home in Dawsonville. That meant little expense for eating and sleeping – financial hurdles that kept Elliott’s early racing career teetering on the brink of extinction. The early days were so tough, Elliott and his father, George, drove all night from their home in the North Georgia mountains to Daytona Beach, Fla., ask NASCAR president Bill France Jr. for some financial direction in keeping their fledging family race team afloat. The response – a $1,500 check from France – not only gave the Elliott clan enough money to race a week later at Talladega, Ala., it helped add to what became part of Elliott’s legendary aura on the Winston Cup Series circuit. Twenty-five years later, Elliott is still racing. Despite his rocky start at his home track, the Atlanta Motor Speedway, site of the March 12 Cracker Barrel Old Country Store 500, remains the cornerstone of current success. Elliott has five career victories and four pole positions at Atlanta. Of all active drivers, only Dale Earnhardt has more wins (eight) at the 1.54-mile quad-oval, and both Elliott and Earnhardt are tied with the most pole positions. And coming off a third-place finish at the season-opening Daytona 500 and a fourth-place showing at the CarsDirect.com 400 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway last week, the 44-year-old driver he has the momentum and confidence to make another curtain call in the Victory Circle. “We do have some good momentum with this team,” Elliott said. “They’ve worked hard. Tonycola (Tony Santanicola) came in with Ernie on the motors and I can’t say enough good things about what’s going on. They put a great car under me. “I think Daytona really sets the tone for the year. It really helped us. To say we’ve got confidence right now is an understatement. We’ve worked hard. The guys put a lot of effort in this car. I can’t believe the car is as good as it is.” Elliott celebrated his 25th anniversary in the Winston Cup Series on Feb. 27 at Rockingham, N.C. He started 34th in his first race back in 1976 and finished 33rd. His payday 25 years ago was $640. “Six hundred and forty dollars wouldn’t buy you a good steak at the local restaurant,” Elliott said this week as he looked back on a career that’s included a Winston Cup Series Championship, 40 career victories, more than $21 million in earnings, 14 Most Popular Driver awards and a stock car record lap of 212.809 mph at Talladega. “Things have come a long way. I’ve seen a lot of changes in the sport, both good and bad, but for the most part, it’s been good.” Elliott’s first Winston Cup Series car was a powder blue Ford Torino. It was owned by his father, sponsored by the family’s Ford Dealership in Dahlonega, Ga., and built by the driver and his two brothers, Ernie and Dan. But months into the family’s dedicated, yet futile, attempt to make the Winston Cup Series part of their fulltime routine, they were out of money. “Back then, everything was a struggle,” Elliott said. “We didn’t have a lot of money, but my dad was always involved in racing. I mean, we struggled week-in and week-out just to show up. We bought used tires, we did everything we possibly could just to make the races. “If a person came in today, there would be no way on earth that he could survive like we tried to survive back in those days. There weren’t a lot of cars and there was quite a bit of difference from the pole speed to the last car. It didn’t cost you as much to race back then. Cars didn’t go to the wind tunnel like they do today, and you didn’t have all the technology and all the race teams. We’d go to sleep in the back of the truck. We did everything. It was pretty incredible for what we came through and being able to survive it and be able to be where I’m at today and look back on that and reflect on that years later.” What does Elliott remember most from his first race 25 years ago? “It was a total whole new experience, it was something that was totally out of my realm of thinking,” he said. “Man, it was different. I don’t know that I had a clue that I knew what I was doing, but I was there to learn.” The lesson continues. This week, however, it returns home to the Atlanta Motor Speedway – the track where Elliott’s Winston Cup history really started. For more information on the CRACKER BARREL OLD COUNTRY STORE 500 weekend, contact Atlanta Motor Speedway's ticket office at 770-946-4211.
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