WOW OH WOW!!!! Bill Elliott, with those mid 80's Ernie Elliott power plants, was the SECRETARIAT 🐴on superspeedways back then!!! A BIG RED MACHINE!!! What a BEAUTIFUL race car!!! All the stars aligned back then. Bill with his good ol boy demeaner and Ernie praising God and living the American dream (you much watch Ernie's interview after this race). How can you top that?!!! Racing just wasn't the same for me when that era ended. Thank God for RU-vid! I still get goosebumps seeing Bill make up those two laps under green running qualifying laps at 205 mph to gain those two laps back!!! The only travesty is that this race wasn't recorded in its entirety. I bet it would get a billion views!!! 😉
I know this isn't the entire race but so much better than what was offered before. This was one of my favorite races that I really never saw. It gives me a better idea of how Elliot ran this race and ran the leaders down with no caution flags until Dale Earnhardt blew up. Thank you for posting.
I've always heard about the legend of this race and that Bill came from 2 laps down but could never find video of it. Although it was cut quite a bit it showed the parts of the legendary comeback!! Thanks for posting this.
Baddest bird to ever roam thru nascar.this car an driver had no compittion.jus imagine todays schedule in 85...1985 was the shortest nascar season in history.they run 8 more races plus all but dropped the short tracks its possible with today's schedule in 1095 bill could a win 25 races nobody was in same league they were in.except nascar an unfair rule changes every week an still couldn't catch him till nascar gave gm the aero coupe for 86 which was nothing more than a aero dynamic band aid for a piss desige.all to catch one man
Elliotts car was geared lower than most others.Ernie’s motors produced more hp at lower rpm. Everyone else had to wind their motors too tight trying to keep up, so they blew up.
We owned a junkyard 15 miles from the track. My dad raced local dirt tracks my whole childhood. We went to every race at Talladega since I can remember, we was there for qualifying, practice and race every year. I have pictures in victory lane with Dave Marcus. Not sure what year, I was 7 or 8. But my point is this. To this day nobody knows what made them so much faster but I can promise you there is no way there was a lower gear in that car. I know I was in 87 at practice down the back straightaway he was up to 223 mph. To watch that man slide that car through the corners and still going way faster than everybody else is something you had to witness. As a now 54 year old man I can tell you them guys had it figured out but the main thing they had is a man sitting in the driver seat that must have brass balls because this tv footage don't tell the story. Just no words to describe what they had but it dam sure was not a lower rear-end. If that be the case that 351 ford would be have rpms above 10000. Me you and a million other people to this day would love to know what they had.
Most folks remember this race because of that 9 car, but I always remember it because this was the race Kyle Petty showed the entire planet he was a real driver & not just The King's Son. That 4th to 1st move that Kyle made on the back stretch, must have been Richard's proudest moment. 💪🤠 Nobody had anything for Bill that day except a 🏆& $$
@@brianbooher7318 Idk bout that Hoss, Ol' Wild Bill & The Elliot Family flat out refused to share ANY of their set-up secret's, even when HEAVILY PRESSURED by FORD to do so with the other FORD team's. I'd have to hear that straight from Kyle & Bill, before I'd believe that 🤷🏻♂️
@@Slinger43 check into it I promise bill gave the woods brothers his setup before that race.o never could understand Kyle .he showed moments of pure brilliance on the track.when he was on he was on he lapped the field at rockingham I belive twice but a lot of the time he seamed way out of his league
@@brianbooher7318 Ok, I'll check that out 👍 As for one Kyle Eugene Petty, that guy is simply cut from a different cloth than most folks. He is a Racer thru & thru & know's more about the sport of Stockcar Racing aka NASCAR, than anyone his age or younger & more than 90% of those older than he, he care's more than most think, Hell, he care's deeply, it's just that no one know's about what! LOL! I personally think Kyle believed from the beginning, that no matter what he did, no matter how much he won, people were never gonna think he was worthy of being Richard Petty's son behind the wheel of a Stockcar, so he made up his mind from the get-go, that he wouldn't take to heart anything people said about him behind the wheel of a cup car & to this day, KP never has. Absolutely love that dude & his entire Royal family 💪🤠👍
8:43 Typical DW still complaining even after NASCAR raised the Ford roofline 1/2". Then at 19:11 DW blows up. Some of the GM guys spent way too much time complaining about aerodynamics and not enough time focusing on their own engines. Even Ford to Ford, Elliott qualified 0.83 sec faster than Cale, so aerodynamics was only a piece of the dominance. HP was another piece, but engine build quality and longevity was the key. You can't win a race if you blow an engine. I guess DW was also in disbelief that Labonte qualified 0.41 sec faster than DW's big named Junior Johnson team that had been doing it for 30 years, lol.
Right!! 😆 I feel kinda bad for Bruce, wasn't really his fault as the Kardashian Women have destroyed every Man who ignored the warning's of "The Kardashian Curse" 😈👺😈 Ol' Bruce was driven insane by it when he looked directly at her 😵
I love listening to DW talk at 8:43. It's the equivalent of a Kmart executive in 2007 questioning how Amazon could be that much better when Kmart has been around for 30 years. What a narrow minded view DW had.
THAT is the truth! Although no one was killed in that wreck, it sure could've happened in later years. I read somewhere that Rusty Wallace actually ran in the low 230's mph in an unrestricted test run. He said it almost felt like racing on ice! -shudder-
It was weird at the time to see the Wood Brothers car not sporting it's famous #21 but understandable due to Kyle Petty was in the middle of his sponsor contract with 7-Eleven