NASCAR’s version of the Fortunate Son
ATLANTA — Here is racing’s version of the “I-walked- f ive- miles- t os chool- each- day- uphill” tale that every parent feels compelled to tell every child, in one form or another.
Listen up, young Chase: Bill Elliott didn’t make the field the first time he tried to qualify for the Daytona 500 (1977). There would come an era when he’d take the pole three years in a row, winning the big race in 1985 and 1987. But all that arrived after nearly a decade of running a lot of stuff held together by shoestrings and Bondo. Dues were paid, son.
After his boy Chase Elliott won the Daytona 500 pole on his first try, Bill recalled a much quieter beginning.
“That stuff we had back then was terrible,” he said. “The first race I ran at Daytona was the Fourth of July race in 1976 (he started 38th, finished 19th), ran a car that was not much. We went back in 1977, I don’t think we made the (500) then. It was one of those deals, we didn’t have the equipment, we didn’t have the money, we didn’t have anything.”
It took Bill Elliott — a Hall of Famer today, the man who made Dawsonville, Ga., an important part of the NASCAR landscape — 10 years and 16 races at Daytona to win a pole there.
It took his son, barely 20 years old, one lap.
Running in Jeff Gordon’s old car — no heap, that — and for Gordon’s old Hendrick Motorsports team — hardly a hand-tomouth operation there — Chase turned the f astest lap in qualifying Sunday and became the youngest driver ever to earn the pole in the most famous of stock car races.
And, yes, while being the pole-sitter promises nothing, Elliott’s dad recognized that, “It’s a huge step. Whatever happens in the 500 happens. Drivers make mistakes, things happen. To make it to the end of the race is going to be a challenge in itself.”
Regardless of how quickly success has come for the son, there seems to be a good deal of modesty remaining in the Elliott gene pool, if you listen to Chase’s reaction to winning the pole.
“It was a great way to start things off,” Chase said. “This has been planned for quite a while, so it was cool that it happened. As I’ve said through the day yesterday and this morning, (Sunday) had very, very little to do with me.”
Then, performing the classic driver’s litany of reciting his team and his sponsor, he concluded, “They were the ones who earned it.”
There is such a vast difference between winning the pole in the Daytona 500 — even for all the noise that creates — and actually doing something with it on race day. Especially for a rookie who is unschooled in the ways of restrictor plate racing and all the tension and ontrack alliance- building that entails.
Here, let Chase explain it: “(The difference between qualifying and racing) is as polar opposite as you can possibly do something. Running single file by yourself, holding it wide open for a lap versus taking off two seconds on the stopwatch and having guys all around you two, three, sometimes four wide.”
The long-term advantage of sitting on the pole is hardly evident. Only nine times in 57 years has the pole-sitter won the Daytona 500, no one since 2000. Elliott is the sixth rookie to earn the pole in the race. Average finish of the five others — 13th, the best finish being an eighth by Danica Patrick in 2013.
Still, Chase did ever ything he possibly could with his first deed as a Sprint Cup driver, performing for a team where the expectations get focused like sunlight through a magnifying glass.
You try telling all the rejuvenated, second-generation Elliott f ans that qualifying for the pole belied just how new Chase is to the unique challenges of racing at this level.
But if his quick start pushed the already lofty designs for him into the realm of the unrealistic, so be it.
“We realize that the only pressure that’s relevant is that we put on ourselves,” Chase said. “As f ar as the spotlight goes, I know that is just an avenue that I can give credit to the people that deserve it. I want to make sure I do my job there.”
Is dad concerned about so much being heaped upon his son so soon?
“You kind of set the bar up there,” Bill said with a grin. “When I came in, I was way under the radar and nobody was paying attention.
“For me, that made it easier, because our philosophy was if we run well, everything else will take care of itself. Today, you come into this sport and everybody expects you to run well every week.”
But it’s not like if he had the choice, that the elder Elliott would have turned down all the advantages that have flowed to his son.
“The positive side about it is he’s got a lot of great people around him, he’s got a lot of good things going for him unlike when I got started,” he said. “The learning curve is a lot steeper but you’ve got the tools to get you there so much faster.”