Atlanta Motor Speedway: A Special Place for Bill Elliott

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To truly understand how special it is for Bill Elliott to drive the Wood Brothers’ No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion at Atlanta Motor Speedway, as he’ll do this weekend in the Kobalt Tools 500, it helps to know about one of his first-ever trips to his home track.

The year was 1973. Elliott was just a teenager. He went to the race with some high school friends from his hometown of Dawsonville, Ga. “We drove down there in a 1973 Ford Torino,” Elliott said, adding that the sporty ride came from his father’s small Ford dealership. “We parked in the infield. It was really muddy.” The boys watched a familiar scenario play out – David Pearson won the race in the Wood Brothers’ No. 21 Mercury, one of the team’s league-leading 12 Cup victories at the track and one of their 11 superspeedway wins that season. Pearson and the Woods swept Atlanta that year.

So were young Elliott and his pals backing the winner that day? “Of course,” he said. “It was David Pearson. It was a Ford, and it was the Wood Brothers.” Soon Elliott was racing himself at AMS, starting out in Fords fielded by his father, the late George Elliott, a man who not only loved Fords but absolutely hated any other brand of automobile.

To date, Elliott has five wins and five poles at his home track. Throughout his Sprint Cup career, Elliott, from the north Georgia mountains, has been a crowd favorite at AMS. Many of his fans will watch Sunday’s race from the Elliott Grandstand, which was named for the popular driver and his family. “It’s always nice to race in front of the home folks,” Elliott said. “I’m fortunate to have a pretty good following there, and it’ll be good to be among them again.”

He said he also feels fortunate to be back behind the wheel of the same car he drove last fall in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. In that race, he qualified ninth; fell back, then charged through the field late in the race to claim a strong 16th-place finish. Also in his favor is the fact that the Motorcraft/Quick Lane crew has spent the winter tuning the car and working on its overall downforce program, which is one of the main keys to running well on an intermediate track that makes up the bulk of the team’s limited 2010 schedule.

“It’s amazing what we accomplished last year, and I look forward to getting back to work and continuing to improve what we had,” Elliott said. Elliott also looks forward to tackling the aging, abrasive asphalt surface at AMS. “The track has a lot of character,” he said. “The asphalt’s getting some age on it, and you can run the top, or the middle or the bottom groove. “That makes for a good race for the fans, and for the teams and drivers it gives us the ability to do a lot of different stuff.”

Qualifying for the Kobalt Tools 500 is set for Friday at 6:10 p.m. The 500 will get the green flag on Sunday at 1 p.m., with live coverage on FOX.

I hope they have a great weekend

Hope they both can bring back some magic..........

I hope Bill has a great run on Sunday.

well, they didn't have a good qualifying outcome & if you saw bill's interview before he ran he didn't sound confident at all in the car. but the good news for bill is that no PCP was needed & he will be starting 34th (bill was faster than almirola, mears & cook). hoping that they can improve in the two practices tomorrow, i'll be watching & rooting!

Bill seemed really disappointed in his interview before qualifying. He just had zero confidence in the car. Hope they're able to tune it in today during practice!

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Elliott Qualifies the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion 34th at Atlanta

Bill Elliott and the crew of the # 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion couldn’t be blamed if they took it easy during Friday night qualifying at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The team had struggled in practice and made lots of changes to the car after practice. The outcome of their qualifying lap on a cold, crisp night was far from predictable.

Then, just before Elliott took his turn on the clock, Bobby Labonte, a former series champion, qualified on time. At that point, Elliott was in the race no matter how he ran because he was then eligible for a past-champion’s provisional starting spot. But the Woods and Elliott came to race, so once Elliott fired up the #21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion, he gave it everything he had.

He found the speed to make the race without having to resort to the provisional, a victory in itself on a potentially disappointing day. To do so, he picked up 6/10 of a second over his best lap in practice, a difference in running 185 miles per hour and 189. It was about the same pick-up that Dale Earnhardt Jr. needed to win the pole for Sunday’s race.

“I don’t think anybody else picked up that much,” said Wood Brothers team co-owner Eddie Wood. “That’s a big credit to [crew chief] David Hyder and the crew and to Bill,” he said. “Bill knew when he left pit road that he was in the show, but he still ran that hard.”

Elliott will start 34th in Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 500, but now that the team is in the race, the crew can focus on a more conventional set-up for running 500 miles. “We’ll go back to something close to what we’ve run here before,” Wood said.

After the red # 21 was back in its pit stall and put away for the night, Wood and Hyder went trackside and took in a NASCAR Modified race on the quarter-mile oval on the frontstretch at AMS. It was a welcome respite from a tense, stressful day at the track. Stressful days are something the Woods and Hyder deal with regularly while running a limited schedule without the luxury of a guaranteed starting spot. “It’s like this every week,” Wood said. “It’s no different than Daytona. We were fast at Daytona, but we still had to sweat it out. “Here at Atlanta, we struggled a little bit, but fortunately we were able to get in the race on time and not have to use a provisional.”

As a bonus, the Modified race was a barn-burner, a throwback to the old days of racing at places like Bowman-Gray Stadium, where team founder Glen Wood, Eddie’s father, once ruled the roost. A day that had been filled with anxiety ended with the satisfaction of a gutsy qualifying effort by the 54-year-old Bill Elliott and a door-to-door Modified finish as 19-year-old Corey Lajoie beat veteran Tim Brown in the 150-lap feature.

Now it’s on to Sunday, and a race at a track where the Woods are the all-time win leaders with 12 and where Elliott is the hometown favorite. The Kobalt Tools 500 is set to get the green flag at 1 p.m. with TV coverage on FOX and radio coverage by PRN.