NASCAR WCUP: Elliott heads to Michigan as leading active driver with seven wins
16 August 2000
Posted By Terry
Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
|
BILL ELLIOTT --94-- McDonald's Taurus -- "We're definitely encouraged to go back there. It's been a race track that's been good to me and bad to me. I felt like we had a really good race car the last race there and with the rain cutting the race short a lot of things happened that kind of screwed us up, but it could have been worse. I was within a lap of having to come in, but when the caution came out I got my lap back off of Jeremy and was able to come back and run in the top five. We made a pit stop and got shifted back a little bit, but I was still pretty decent when the rains came and that was pretty much it. That's the kind of race track that if you can run good, a lot of cars run in the lead lap and a lot of cars run good, but we've had a lot of good success there."
MICHIGAN IS A FAST RACE TRACK. ARE YOU CONCERNED ABOUT THE SPEEDS YOU GUYS ARE RUNNING AT SOME OF THESE PLACES? "I wouldn't necessarily say we're going too fast until you hit something, then you're going too fast. But I think there are some issues that need to be looked at with the way the speeds have escalated over the last couple of years. We've made another step in aerodynamics, tires, engines and here we are running just that little bit faster, so you look at that and take that into consideration. Yeah, I think we need to be conscious of this every race and I think there are things we need to not stop working on just because things don't happen for a while. I think it's a constant evolution. We need to continue to work, we need to continue do things and we need to continue to look at things -- and I'm not only talking about the race team, but to the drivers, to NASCAR, to the race track, to everybody involved."
WHAT ARE SOME THINGS YOU LOOK AT? "I go back to what's happened with Adam (Petty) and Kenny Irwin -- find out what the circumstances were, what we could do to prevent it, how can we make the racing better -- maybe turn around and slow the cars down and do something a little bit different. I don't know, but anything you do is gonna cost money. That's a side of it, but how do you put a number on somebody's life? You can't do that, so you look at a lot of different stuff. I don't know what they're gonna do. Honestly, I just don't know what NASCAR needs to do, but we need to look at this stuff and go from there."
HOW MUCH HAS THE RACING CHANGED SINCE YOU STARTED IN WINSTON CUP? YOU MENTIONED AT INDY HOW MUCH HARDER IT IS TO PASS CARS NOW. "I think the more we put these cars under a microscope the more racing's gonna change. You've got to understand the evolution of the race car. It's like Rusty said, these cars are so aerodynamically sensitive that it doesn't take anything to screw 'em up. You can catch a guy two or three-tenths a lap and get to him and then you can't do anything with him when you get there. I think that's just a part of the evolution of the race car. Back in the 70's, I mean the cars were like pushing one of these vans around. It just didn't make a lot of difference. The aerodynamics and the downforce didn't play such a factor like it does today."
IS IT AS MUCH FUN DRIVING NOW? "It's still a challenge. You've still got to figure out how to make your car better with what you've got, but you've gotta approach the race so much differently than what you did. It's a never-ending evolution."
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