Bill Elliott: 44 Wins, One Title, and the Fastest Lap NASCAR Has Ever Seen

Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing Driver Spotlight - where we pull one Cup Series driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: Awesome Bill from Dawsonville.

The Short Version

Bill Elliott won 44 Cup Series races, 55 poles and the 1988 championship driving the red number 9 Ford out of Dawsonville, Georgia. He was the first driver to win the Winston Million, and in 1987 he ran a qualifying lap at Talladega that nobody has beaten in the 39 years since. Fans voted him NASCAR's Most Popular Driver 16 times, which is still a record. If you started watching in the 1980s, Elliott is probably the reason you have a favorite number.

A Family Shop in North Georgia

Elliott was born October 8, 1955, in Dawsonville, a small mountain town about an hour north of Atlanta. He did not come up through a big race team. He came up through his family. His father George bought the cars, his brother Ernie built the engines, and his brother Dan worked the chassis. Bill drove. They ran on a shoestring for years, showed up at superspeedways when they could afford to, and went home when they could not.

His first Cup start came in 1976. His first win did not come until November 1983 at Riverside, his 117th start. That is seven years of grinding before anything paid off. Then Harry Melling bought the team, the money got steady, and the whole thing took off at once.

1985: The Season That Made Him a Legend

Nobody saw 1985 coming. Elliott won 11 races and 11 poles in 28 starts. He won the Daytona 500 in February. He won the Winston 500 at Talladega in May after losing nearly two laps with a broken oil line and running the field back down under green. Then he won the Southern 500 at Darlington on September 1 to collect the first Winston Million, a one-million-dollar bonus for winning three of the sport's four biggest races in the same year.

That check gave him the nickname that stuck to the merchandise forever. Million Dollar Bill. The other nickname, Awesome Bill from Dawsonville, came from the same run. He did not win the championship that year, which still bothers people who watched it, but he became the biggest name in the sport.

The Lap Nobody Has Touched

On April 30, 1987, Elliott went out for qualifying at Talladega and ran a lap at 212.809 mph. That is the fastest qualifying speed in NASCAR history. It is not close to being broken, either. NASCAR brought in restrictor plates at Daytona and Talladega the next season to slow the cars down, and the sport has used some form of power limit at those two tracks ever since. Barring a rules change nobody is asking for, that number is permanent.

It’s 2-12 at 8:09 PM. Perfect time to celebrate the incredible qualifying lap laid down here by Awesome Bill that still dominates the #NASCAR record books! 212.809 mph, April 30, 1987

— Talladega Superspeedway (@TALLADEGA) February 13, 2019

The Title, and the One That Got Away

The championship came in 1988. Elliott won six races, posted 15 top fives and 22 top tens in 29 starts, and beat Rusty Wallace for the Winston Cup. It is the only title of his career, and he earned it the hard way after three straight seasons of running up front and coming up short.

The one that still stings came in 1992. Elliott moved to Junior Johnson's team, won five races including the first four of the season, and went to the final race at Atlanta with a shot. Alan Kulwicki finished second to Elliott that day but led one more lap, which was worth five bonus points, and won the championship by 10 points. It was the closest title finish in Cup history at the time. Elliott had more wins. Kulwicki had the lap.

By the Numbers

Here is the whole career, laid out in the parts that matter. Every number below is a Cup Series career figure.

Off the Track

Elliott never got comfortable being famous. He was quiet in interviews, went home to Dawsonville when the weekend ended, and stayed close to the family shop that built him. He and his wife Cindy raised three kids. His daughters are Starr and Brittany. His son is Chase Elliott, the 2020 Cup Series champion who drives the number 9 today.

That makes the Elliotts the third father and son pair to both win a Cup championship, after Lee and Richard Petty and Ned and Dale Jarrett. Bill kept running selected races long after he stopped chasing points, made his last Cup start in 2012, and now shows up at tracks mostly to watch his son work. Dawsonville still rings a siren downtown when an Elliott wins a race. It has been doing that since the 1980s.

The Bottom Line

Bill Elliott is proof that a family operation out of a small Georgia town could beat everybody, and that the biggest number on your record does not have to be a championship. He has one title and 44 wins. He also has a 212.809 mph lap that NASCAR will almost certainly never see again.

Ride with the red number 9. A few Awesome Bill pieces in stock right now:

• Bill Elliott #9 Million Dollar Bill Gold Trucker Snapback Hat
• Bill Elliott #9 1987 World's Fastest Race Car 212.809 Black Tee
• Bill Elliott #9 Awesome Bill from Dawsonville Signature Gray Tee
• Bill Elliott #9 World's Fastest Race Car Patch Red Trucker Hat

See it all in the Bill Elliott collection. New driver spotlights drop every Thursday.