Bill Elliott, driver of the No. 21 U.S. Air Force Ford Fusion, will be inducted into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame this evening. Elliott will be flying to Atlanta immediately after today’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice and return in time to start 24th for tomorrow’s Best Buy 400.
BILL ELLIOTT – No. 21 U.S. Air Force Ford Fusion – YOU’RE FLYING TO ATLANTA AFTER PRACTICE TO BE INDUCTED INTO THE ATLANTA SPORTS HALL OF FAME. THAT MUST BE A GOOD FEELING. “I’m really looking forward to it. It’s something you don’t really dwell on at my point in time. By this time I thought I’d be a little bit more retired, but I still enjoy driving. I still enjoy being around this stuff, so it’s an honor to be included as part of this hall of fame. You look back on your career and a lot of the successes that you did have and it’s pretty amazing at the end of the day, I mean when you really sit down and look at it. In the era we accomplished those things, I feel like it makes our family real proud because we came in not as an established entity and built something in a pretty short period of time. So when you look at the whole scheme of things what we did was pretty special.”
WITH THIS BEING THE ATLANTA SPORTS HALL OF FAME, DOES THAT MAKE IT EVEN MORE SPECIAL – THE FACT IT’S YOUR HOME AREA HONORING YOU? “Yeah. It’s a little bit out of the racing flow as far as when you look at Daytona and Charlotte and what it is to racing today. But if you look at the state of Georgia as a whole and how much it influenced racing early on, it’s pretty big. I didn’t realize how much racing started until reading back some of the stuff that went on around Dawsonville and Atlanta in the twenties, thirties and forties – how much influence that area had and how big it was, and how much just a few things would have made a lot of difference.”
SO WHAT IS YOUR PLAN FOR TODAY? “Well, hopefully we’ll run the first practice and then see where the rain is and then fly out of here for Atlanta. And since the driver’s meeting isn’t until noon tomorrow, that still gives you plenty of time to fly back here in the morning.”