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Elliott on Charlotte After taking last weekend off for Mother's Day, the NASCAR Winston Cup Series resumes with a two-week stretch at Lowe's Motor Speedway for the annual running of The Winston and Coca-Cola 600. The Winston is scheduled for Saturday, May 20 with the Coca-Cola 600 slated eight days later on May 28. Bill Elliott gave his opinions on competing in these two events and whether or not they should be conducted in the same week. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE TWO RACES BEING ADDED NEXT YEAR AND WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE SOME THINGS CONDENSED? "From the standpoint of the guys on the crew, yes, because they're worked to death as it is. Everybody says, 'Well, it's only a couple of more weekends we're throwing out here,' but the problem is you're still gone Friday, Saturday, Sunday and the farther you go that normally means you throw out Thursday for a travel day and part of Monday for a recovery day, so that's four or five days a week that you multiply times two. I don't write the rules, I just go to the races." HOW ABOUT THE AMOUNT OF TIME SPENT IN CHARLOTTE? "I feel like the races have grown to where The Winston needs to find another place. Before, we needed a stand-alone race, but now we could maybe put it on the same weekend (as the 600). That's still a lot of racing, but from the way I see it we need to figure out a way to help the crews from the standpoint of wearing them out every week. The one thing I see being from the owner's side of this deal, I'm wearing an owner's hat now, is here I have to hire not just two or three more people but a lot more people to overcome the amount of traveling and what these guys through week-in and week-out." YOU'VE BEEN IN THE WINSTON EVERY YEAR. DO YOU ENJOY IT? "Well, if you're good it's not bad. If you're bad you might as well just forget about it and worry about the 600 because the way I see it, if you're not capable of winning what does it matter where you end up? It's not a points race. There's nothing there. It's either win or lose. The way I go into it is if I'm good enough that I can be there, that's one story but if I'm not, you just take what you can get, go home and worry about next week." IS IT FUN TO RACE LIKE THAT OR IS IT KIND OF SCARY? "It don't scare me, it's just the point that sometimes people do crazy stuff in the race. Like I said, if you're in a position to win the race that's a different deal, but to race for third, fourth, fifth, sixth, it's irrelevant." WHY IS IT SO CRAZY IN THAT RACE? "There's a lot of pressure to run good and perform good and, to me, that's the box they put us in. The way The Winston format is, with the last 10 laps being a total shootout race, when you've got 10 cars running the same speed something is gonna happen. That's the box we're in." AS FAR AS THE 600 GOES YOU HAVE NEVER WON THAT RACE. "I've come close. I've run good here several times and the last time was probably in '97. I led a lot of the race and then it went so late, I mean it went really late in the night, and it ended with Gordon winning. But, there again, it was one of those years that I was good, but those guys were just on top and that was it." IN '85 YOU HAD A CHANCE TO CLINCH THE WINSTON MILLION HERE, RIGHT? "Yeah. I probably should have had a good race here that year, but we had some little problems. We had a lugnut get caught in the wheel and rupture the brake line, so I didn't have any brakes during the race. I had a really good race car and had a car capable of winning the race, but unfortunately it didn't happen that way."
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