Bill Elliott Was "Awesome" at Atlanta in 1985

It is anybody's guess which of the 43 starters will roll into victorylane at this year's NASCAR Nextel Cup Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta MotorSpeedway. It's even more difficult to imagine anyone duplicating BillElliott's '85 performance at the legendary racetrack.

Amazingly, it'sbeen 20 years since Elliott became "Million Dollar Bill" by winning 11races during his incredible '85 season. Included in those wins were twovictories at Elliott's "home" track, then known as Atlanta InternationalRaceway. The name and the configuration of the 1.5-mile speedway weredifferent in 1985. Atlanta was a true oval back then, with twinquarter-mile straights banked at five degrees and broad, sweeping turnsfeaturing 24 degrees of banking.

Elliott's Coors Ford Thunderbird, ownedby Harry Melling, was the class of the NASCAR Winston Cup field in thetwo '85 Atlanta classics. In the March 17 Coca-Cola 500, Elliott bouncedback from a hard accident at Rockingham, North Carolina, in the previousrace. That crash left him with a compound fracture in his lower leftleg. Undaunted, the Dawsonville, Georgia, driver qualified Third and ledseveral times throughout the race before taking the point for good withjust over 50 circuits remaining in the 328-lap event.

At the finish, itwas Elliott by 2.64-seconds over Geoff Bodine with pole sitter NeilBonnett in Third Place. Ricky Rudd and Bobby Allison completed theTop-5. The victory was Elliott's first at Atlanta and also marked thefirst time a Georgia native had scored a win in the then 25-year historyof the track.

"About the 150-lap mark, my leg got to hurting so bad Ifelt like I was going to have to get out of the car and turn it over toJody Ridley," said Elliott after the race. "I was lucky all through therace that I didn't have to jam on the brakes anywhere. I am a left-footbraker and that would have really hurt."

Elliott was healthy for the '85fall race at Atlanta--the Atlanta Journal 500--and his dominatingperformance put the hurt on the rest of the competition. Fresh off hismillion-dollar winning effort just two months earlier at Darlington(South Carolina) Raceway, Elliott spanked the other 42 cars by leadingthe most laps and beating Cale Yarborough to the finish by 4.25 seconds.

Elliott's famed No. 9 Ford Thunderbird again started Third and spent theearly portion of the race battling Yarborough for the lead. A miscue onpit road--a missing lug nut--forced Elliott to pit a second time andgive up the lead while falling all the way to 12th Place.

Undaunted,Elliott and his red, white, and gold Ford Thunderbird roared back to thefront and reclaimed the lead for good at the 282-lap mark. The triumphgave Elliott 11 wins to go with his 11 pole positions in 1985 as thetour headed into the last race of the season at Riverside, California."We did everything we set out to do," said Elliott afterward. "Now, wecan go to Riverside with a chance to race for the championship. Itcouldn't have been a better day."

The championship wasn't to be,however, as a broken shift pin in his car's transmission sent Elliott tothe garage for 22 laps and saddled him with a 31st-Place finish atRiverside. The mechanical failure was all Darrell Waltrip needed to takethe Winston Cup title from Elliott that year.

Still, there was nodenying Elliott's great season and his two dominating wins at Atlanta.The Atlanta victories marked only the fourth time in speedway historythat a driver had swept both races in a single season at the track.Marvin Panch was the first to do it in 1965 before Bobby Allison andDavid Pearson did it in back-to-back seasons in 1972 and 1973.

In 1992,while driving for Junior Johnson, Elliott became the only man in Atlantahistory to win both races in a single season more than once as heclaimed both the Motocraft Quality Parts 500 and the Hooters 500.

Therecord book shows Elliott is fifth all-time in wins at Atlanta withfive, trailing only Dale Earnhardt (9), Cale Yarborough (7), BobbyLabonte (6) and Richard Petty (6).

This year's spring clash will markthe 91st time the Cup cars have competed on the Atlanta oval. Earnhardtis the all-time pole winner for the spring race with four, whileYarborough tops all drivers with 6 wins in the spring.

Last year, DaleEarnhardt, Jr. became the 25th different driver to win the Atlantaspring classic when he captured the Golden Corral 500. Earnhardt Jr. wasone of six drivers who swapped the lead 16 times in the 325-lap race.The event was relatively caution free with just three yellow flagperiods totaling 17 laps.

Earnhardt Jr. posted an average winning speedof 158.679 miles per hour last spring at Atlanta, just a tick under thetrack record of 159.904 mph set by Bobby Labonte in 1997. The victoryalso marked the first time a father and son had each won a NASCAR Cupevent at the Atlanta track.

The history of Atlanta Motor Speedway isrich and tradition-filled, beginning with Fireball Roberts' win in thefirst-ever race at the track--the Dixie 300 on July 31, 1960--andculminating with Jimmie Johnson's victory in last year's fall event.While there have been plenty of highlights along the way, few seasonshave ever duplicated the dominating performances Bill Elliott turned inat Atlanta in 1985. Only time will tell what the '05 events at Atlantawill bring, but it's hard to imagine they will equal those of "AwesomeBill From Dawsonville" two decades ago.