USA TODAY International Edition
Elliott’s first win links back to dad Bill
Chase’s road to victory was similar
So now there is evidence hinting as to why Chase Elliott had not won a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race in 98 tries.
Apparently he needed a threat from his old man, none other than Awesome Bill from Dawsonville, owner of one of the best nicknames — and some of the best Fords — in NASCAR history.
The threat was none too subtle. In the very week that Chase finally broke through after a frustrating series of eight runner-up finishes, his dad, Bill, had announced he would be returning to NASCAR national series racing by stepping into an Xfinity Series car this month at Road America.
That announcement came like a bolt out of the blue. The older Elliott hasn’t driven in a national series race since 2012, and his last Cup win came in 2003, his last full-time season. He drove limited Cup schedules from 2004 to 2012 without scaring any of the other residents of victory lane.
Bill Elliott is 62, 40 years older than Chase. That generation gap finally was closed Sunday after a 21⁄2-year struggle, Chase taking the checkered flag first at Watkins Glen International to join his Hall of Fame father on the Cup series’ victory list.
There are few wins as emotional as one’s first, and the hug shared by father and son in the craziness of victory lane was special on a number of levels.
It also was particularly welcome at the Dawsonville (Georgia) Pool Room, where the siren — it’s known as a sireen in those parts — that celebrates Elliott family victories had been silent far too long. Chances are it sounded so long Sunday afternoon that it stirred the dead.
The only unfortunate thing about Elliott’s victory Sunday was that his mother, Cindy, wasn’t there to see it. A former auto racing photographer who was shooting images of Bill long before she married him, Cindy perhaps has traveled the toughest road watching her son come oh-so-close to victory but falling short. Often, it hits the mom the hardest.
Perhaps the toughest of those non-wins came in October at Dover International Speedway in Delaware. Elliott led 138 laps, including 59 in a row near the end of the race before being passed by Kyle Busch for first place as the two drivers approached the white flag. Busch won.
Elliott climbed from his car on pit road, clearly stung by the nature of another failure to win. Before the media group descended on him for yet another explanation of yet another second place, Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson walked from his car to Elliott’s, joining Chase for a few minutes of conversation and giving the young driver a chance to settle his nerves and confront the frustration.
Ironically, when Elliott finally won Sunday but then ran out of gas on the race’s cooldown lap, it was Johnson, who is enduring a long winless streak of his own, who pushed Elliott’s car toward victory lane. Elliott called Johnson “a hero of mine” and “a guy I leaned on a lot through some of those hard days.”
There were other ironies associated with the win. Like his father, Chase finished runner-up eight times before winning, and his first win and his dad’s both came on road courses.