Preamble: The title comes from a book by Robert Sheffield’s 2010 novel “Talking to Girls About Duran Duran.” In the novel, he takes 25 pop songs from the 1980s and uses each song as a jumping off point to talk about his love of music and growing up in the 1980s. (If you’re more into hair metal than pop, you should also check out Chuck Klosterman’s 2001 book “Fargo Rock City.”) In “Talking to People Who Don’t Know NASCAR About Daytona, I’m going to take devote each entry in the series to one of my Top 10 favourite Daytona 500s. Instead of discussing who led what laps, etc. I’m going to describe to an audience (and probably a non-existence one) why I chose this particular race.
#8 – “The 1985 Daytona 500 – Dawsonville Dominance”
Dominant.
That’s the only word that could describe Bill Elliott during the Daytona 500.
How dominant?
A virtual who’s-who of NASCAR in the mid-1980s blew their engines just trying to keep up with the young driver from Dawsonville, Georgia. Terry Labonte, Phil Parsons, Benny Parsons, Kyle Petty, Harry Gant, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, A.J. Foyt, Neil Bonnett, Dale Earnhardt, and Cale Yarborough.
Bill Elliott wasn’t quite coming out of nowhere to win the 1985 Daytona 500. He had four race wins under his credit in just over a year. (His first win came in the Winston Western 500 at Riverside, California in the last race of the 1983 season.)
To place Bill Elliott alongside the likes of Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson and even the young Dale Earnhardt, and you would have been hard-pressed to see one of NASCAR’s greatest drivers as 1985 began.
The red-haired youngster definitely looked the part of a small-town Georgia boy. His race team, as word spread of his prowess on the superspeedways, continued to operate out of their family’s shop in Dawsonville, Georgia. Dawsonville, rich in racing history, lies about an hour north of Atlanta.
The first inkling people had that Elliott in the #9 Ford Thunderbird might be a factor was during pre-season testing at Daytona. The “bright red bullet” shot around the 2.5 mile superspeedway at 202 mph when others struggled to make 200 mph.
Then, there was the 125-qualifying race for the Daytona 500 He crossed the start-finish line on the final lap a full 37 seconds ahead of Darrell Waltrip, the widest margin in history of the duel qualifiers.
He also sat on the pole for the 500-miler, with a speed of 205.114 mph, a record that would stand until two years later, when Elliott qualified at 210.364 mph. That record continues to stand in 2021. (He was almost two miles per hour faster than second-place starter Cale Yarborough.)
Elliott was a heck of a driver, no doubt about that. But perhaps the winning edge that “Awesome Bill From Dawsonville” had in his pocket was his brother, Ernie, who served as crew chief and engine builder. Ernie is perhaps the most under-rated engine builder in the history of NASCAR but during the 1980s, there were few better, especially on the superspeedways of Daytona and Talladega.
There were some who said that Ernie Elliott had spent the winter of 1984-85 pouring over the NASCAR rulebook. There were rules for ride heights or how tall the car needed to be, but no one ever said how wide the car had to be. Ernie Elliott is believed to have shaved an inch off either side of the Ford Thunderbird the team took to Daytona and the skilled driving of brother Bill did the rest.
1985 would be the year that “Awesome Bill” became Million Dollar Bill, winning three of the four crown jewel races, including the Winston 500 at Talladega (coming back from 2 laps down) and the Southern 500 to win the very first Winston Million (which had also included the Coca Cola 600 at Charlotte).
But first, he had to win the Daytona 500. Yarborough might have been the only car that could match Elliott. Maybe the veteran, himself a multiple-time winner of the Great American Race, had something up his sleeve for the youngster.
After 62 laps, however, Yarborough was headed to the garage and Bill Elliott seemed to be headed to a win in the Daytona 500. At one point, Elliott had lapped the entire field, save Darrell Waltrip. Shades of the Duel 125 race, and Waltrip was in danger of falling victim to the steadily advancing Elliott car.
However, with fifty-five laps to go, NASCAR found a hole in the car’s right-side headline cover and Elliott was forced to pit. By the time the repair was made, most of the field had caught up and Bill would have to battle Neil Bonnett for the lead.
With four laps to go, Bonnett spun out and the caution flew. Elliott would lead the field to green on the restart and continue to lead them to the checkered flag. Elliott would lead 136 laps including the most important one: the final lap.
Elliott would win eleven races in 1985 but the media spotlight (he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated to name just one publication) and the team’s short track program would ultimately be his downfall, as Waltrip won the 1985 championship.
Elliott would win another Daytona 500 in 1987. While Elliott was still the king of the superspeedways then, he wasn’t quite as dominant, winning when Geoff Bodine ran out of gas on the last lap. Elliott would win a Cup championship in 1988, a feat accomplished by his son, Chase, in 2021.
“Awesome Bill from Dawsonville”, who became a NASCAR all of Famer in 2007, last competed in NASCAR in 2018, racing in the Xfinity Series for GMS Racing at Road America. He is also well-known as the father of “Awesome Chase from the Same Place.”
johnmilner.ca 