Veteran Elliott returns as 62-year-old rookie
Hall of Famer will drive in Xfinity Series stop
Out of retirement and preparing to get behind a steering wheel again, Bill Elliott was in a rush.
The NASCAR Hall of Famer couldn’t avoid this next appointment before his first race at Road America. “Hey, I’ve got to go to a rookie meeting,” Elliott, 62, said with a smile after meeting with reporters. “Oh, well.”
Nearly four decades in racing and Elliott is still experiencing a first for his distinguished career.
Elliott has come out of retirement to drive the No. 23 Chevrolet for GMS Racing in the Xfinity series stop Saturday at the rural Wisconsin road course. It will be his first race in any of NASCAR’s national series since the Cup event at Daytona in July 2012. He hasn’t started a race in the second-tier series since 2005.
“I haven’t been in an Xfinity car in ...” Elliott said before pausing for a few seconds, “1,000 years, I think.”
Don’t be fooled by the modesty. Elliott most definitely knows what he’s doing.
He has 44 Cup wins in 828 starts, along with 175 top-five finishes. His first Cup start came in 1976 at Rockingham; the first victory came at the Riverside road course in his 124th career start in 1983.
Elliott has no real expectations for Road America weekend, other than just to “try to keep [the car] looking like it is right now,” he said. “That’s my first goal and then see how things go from there.”
Elliott took 15 practice laps Friday. He was 26th out of 40 drivers with a top lap speed of 105.791 mph.
IndyCar
The head of competition for IndyCar said that Robert Wickens’ car performed exactly as it was designed when it tore to pieces during a frightening wreck at Long Pond, Pa., leaving the Canadian driver hospitalized with serious injuries to his spinal cord and extremities. Jay Frye also acknowledged that a host of improvements could be made — to the car itself, to the fencing that shredded the car and even to the injury reporting process that some criticized as being much too slow after the accident Sunday. “Any time you have something like this happen, you look at it,” Frye said. “We were very encouraged by how the car held up, certainly not satisfied though, because the driver was injured. We’ll never be satisfied until that doesn’t happen.”
NASCAR rules changes
NASCAR is changing rules for Xfinity and Trucks races next season, saying it will strengthen competition and more clearly define each series. In the Xfinity Series, the maximum starting field will be reduced by two cars to 38 beginning in 2019. Another change involves how points are awarded in the owner championship race for the Xfinity and Trucks series. Car owners only will earn points in the championship race if the driver is an Xfinity or Trucks Series regular.
Sponsor drops Xfinity driver
Lilly Diabetes pulled its sponsorship of Conor Daly’s No. 6 car in the NASCAR Xfinity race at Road America, citing a racially insensitive remark made by the driver’s father in the 1980s that surfaced this week. Lilly said that its sponsorship was intended to raise awareness for treatment options and resources for people living with diabetes. “Unfortunately, the comments that surfaced this week by Derek Daly distract from this focus, so we will no longer run the No. 6 at Road America this weekend,” Lilly said.