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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
CUP: Elliott Riding Part-time Again
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Bill Elliott looks forward to Daytona...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted January 29, 2010   Charlotte, NC
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Bill Elliott will race in at least 13 events in the 2010 season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Bill Elliott hasn’t won a Sprint Cup race since 2003, the last season he ran a full-time schedule.

He’s 54 years old now, and 2010 will mark the seventh straight year he’s run a partial schedule, and the fourth straight season he’s raced with the Wood Brothers team. He ran 20 races with the Woods in 2007, 20 in ’08 and 12 last season, and the team plans at least 13 races this season.

Elliott, who has won 44 Cup races and, ironically, $44 million in a driving career that stretches back to the mid-1970s, is seldom considered a victory threat, but he said he’s in physical and mental shape to race as well as he did 10 to 15 years ago.

“I don’t feel any different, really,” he said. “(The age) just doesn’t seem to matter. That’s one thing I questioned when I stopped. I ran a handful of races in ’04 and ’05, and when Len and Eddie (Wood) asked me to do a few races in ’07, I said, ‘OK, I’ll do a few.’ When I started off, I was racing every week. I thought, ‘Man I’m going to die doing this.’ But once you get used to it, it’s kind of old hat.

“And I keep working out as hard as I can. I ride dirt bikes. But I fall over now and then.”

The Elliott-Woods schedule will begin with the Daytona 500, and it is at Daytona, given the nature of the draft, that Elliott probably has his best shot at scoring an upset.

“There’s no reason we can’t be on the front row when we get to Daytona,” he said. “We always have good cars there, and we’re focused only on that race going to Daytona. I expect good things.”

Team co-owner Eddie Wood said his team will continue to put all its strength into its part-time schedule while trying to build a base to return to full-time racing, possibly as early as 2011. In the meantime, there are advantages to cherry-picking races, he said.

“You have more time,” he said. “The group of people we have together is a very close-knit group. And it’s small. And small is OK. It works for us. We have a lot of time to do things. If we want to do a test or have an idea, we have time to go do it. The bigger teams don’t.

“We do want to get back full-time, but we won’t do it until we can do it correctly. You won’t ever see us be a start-and-park car.”

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.



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