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Bill Elliott

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This article is about the NASCAR driver Bill Elliott. For the similarly named film, see Billy Elliot.

Vorlage:NASCAR current driver Bill Elliott (Born October 8, 1955 in Dawsonville, Georgia) is a driver in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup series. He currently drives the #91 Dodge Charger for Evernham Motorsports on a part-time basis with teammates Kasey Kahne, Jeremy Mayfield, and Scott Riggs. Elliott drove the #9 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Intrepid for car owner Ray Evernham from 2001 to 2003 and won four events including the Brickyard 400 in 2002.

In 2004, Elliott relinquished the #9 car to rookie Kasey Kahne and switched to a part-time schedule driving R&D cars for Evernham. Elliott drove the #91 Dodge Intrepid for Evernham in three events (along with the Budweiser Shootout) and also drove the #98 Dodge Intrepid in three other events because of sponsorship issues between Coca-Cola (Elliott's sponsor) and Pepsi (Evernham's sponsor). Elliott was listed as the owner of the #98 car, but Evernham leased the car to him. Although he only made six starts during his first part-time season, he still managed to have some success which included a ninth-place finish at Indianapolis and second and third-place qualifying efforts at Texas and California respectively.

In 2005, Elliott continued his part-time driving duties which included driving a 'retro' #39 Coors Dodge Charger for Chip Ganassi Racing in the Budweiser Shootout and the #91 Evernham Dodge Charger in several events. He also competed in several NASCAR Busch Series events driving for both Ray Evernham and Rusty Wallace. His 2006 plans are currently unknown, though he is likely to continue his part-time driving duties. Elliott has stated that he wants to run five to ten races for Evernham during the season, and Evernham has stated that Elliott can drive for him as long as he wants. The 2005 owners' points for the #91 team will go to Scott Riggs and the new #10 Evernham team in 2006, so Elliott's #91 team will once again become a completely new R&D team. On January 4, 2006, Elliott announced that he would pilot the #36 Chevrolet for MB2 Motorsports in the 2006 Daytona 500.

Elliott made his first Winston Cup start at Rockingham in 1976. In 1983, Elliott gained financial support from Harry Melling and earned his first Winston Cup win at Riverside the same year. He gained sponsorship from Coors the following year. In 1985, Elliott earned 11 wins and 11 poles and also won the first Winston Million in the Southern 500 at Darlington. This earned him the nicknames "Wild Bill," "Million Dollar Bill," and "Awesome Bill From Dawsonville." In 1988, Elliott won the Winston Cup Championship.

Elliott fielded his own Winston Cup race team from 1995 until 2000, but was never as successful as he was with Melling and the Junior Johnson owned team, where he finished second in the 1992 points standings and lost the Winston Cup Championship to Alan Kulwicki by a mere 10 points. Elliott sold his team to Evernham in 2000 and began driving the #9 Dodge Intrepid the following year.

Also, he has won NASCAR's Most Popular Driver Award a record 16 times which he last won in 2002. He withdrew his name from the ballot after that and the award will be renamed after Elliott when he retires from the sport.

Throughout his career, Elliott has garnered 44 wins in the Cup series, including 2 victories in the Daytona 500, as well as one Busch Series win at Watkins Glen. Elliott is the current holder of the track record at Texas Motor Speedway. Elliott also holds the track record at both Talladega and Daytona, neither of which is likely to be broken due to the current use of restrictor plates at both tracks.

In 1990, Konami released the first officially-licensed NASCAR game, Bill Elliott's NASCAR Challenge for MS-DOS. The game featured four official NASCAR tracks and it also made Elliott the first NASCAR driver to be featured in a video game. The game was released for the NES and Amiga in 1991, and Bill Elliott's NASCAR Fast Tracks was released for the Game Boy at the same time. Elliott continued to appear in most NASCAR games until the release of EA Sports' NASCAR 2005: Chase for the Cup in 2004 when he began his semi-retirement. The following year, he was seen in several screenshots and videos for EA Sports' NASCAR 06: Total Team Control driving the #91 Stanley Tools Dodge. However, he was removed from the game before its release and the #91 was removed from the Custom Car Garage feature for NEXTEL Cup. Ironically, Elliott's teammate Jeremy Mayfield was also absent from NASCAR 2005 (though he reappeared in NASCAR 06) and an official explanation was never given for their absences from the two games. Unlike Elliott in NASCAR 06, Mayfield had not been seen in any screenshots or videos for NASCAR 2005. However, Kasey Kahne was featured in the #9 Evernham Dodge, and Mayfield and the #19 Evernham Dodge had been featured in previous NASCAR games.

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