Now, Bill Elliott’s One of Good Ol’ Boys

Bill Elliott is the darling of NASCAR stock car racing today, the winner of five races this season, including the Daytona 500, and still eligible for a $1 million bonus if he can win the Southern 500 at Darlington in September--but it was only two years ago that he came to Riverside without a victory to his name.

Elliott even contemplated giving up his family’s bid for stock car glory, wondering if he could ever succeed against Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, Cale Yarborough and the other stars with the heavy financing and top cars.

“For a long time our team felt like David among all the Goliaths of Winston Cup racing,” Elliott said. “Here we were with hand-me-down equipment, trying to compete with the superstars of the sport.”

Things turned around in 1983 at Riverside International Raceway when the freckle-faced redhead from Dawsonville, Ga., won his first NASCAR race, the Winston Western 500.

“I read a book when I was a little kid, one just about every little kid read, called ‘The Little Engine That Could,’ ” Elliott said. “For a long time, we thought we were like that engine--we thought we could, we knew we could and finally at Riverside, we did.”

Elliott and his Ford Thunderbird will be back at Riverside this weekend for the 16th annual Budweiser 400, No. 12 in the Winston Cup championship series for U. S. manufactured sedans. Qualifying over the 2.62-mile road course is set for Friday at 3 p.m. with the 400-kilometer (248.9 miles) race Sunday at 1 p.m. Also scheduled Sunday is the All-American 200 for 1966-85 cars in the intermediate and compact classes.

NASCAR Grand National champion Terry Labonte, leading in points this year even though he has not won a race, is the defending champion in Sunday’s $225,000 race. Also racing will be Darrell Waltrip, who won stock car racing’s richest doubleheader last weekend when he nipped Harry Gant to win $200,000 Saturday in The Winston at Harrisburg, N.C., then came back Sunday to beat Gant again for a $90,000 payoff in the World 600 at Charlotte.

“I’m hot and I can’t wait to get to Riverside,” Waltrip said after Sunday’s win, which was his first of the regular NASCAR season. “The way I feel, I’d race in Siberia if there was a race there because I’m on a streak. I wish Riverside was tomorrow.”

Waltrip has won four times at Riverside, twice in the Budweiser and twice in the Winston Western 500.

George Follmer, an old favorite at Riverside where he won Can-Am and Trans-Am championships, is making a stock car comeback in a new Monte Carlo owned by Harold Fagan of Charlotte. It will be Follmer’s first stock car competition since 1974, when he drove a Matador for Roger Penske at Riverside.

Follmer has maintained his racing sharpness by road testing and preparing 12 Camaros for the International Race of Champions.

Riverside won’t have the only big stock car race this weekend.

Saugus Speedway has scheduled a Miller High Life 150 Saturday night, featuring former Winston Cup champion Bobby Allison, who also will run at Riverside Sunday. It will be Allison’s first time on Saugus’ one-third mile oval.

Driving in two races in less than 24 hours is nothing new to Allison. On one weekend last year he drove 500 laps and finished second in a Grand National race at Bristol, Tenn., on a Saturday night, flew his own airplane to Milwaukee for a 200-mile American Speed Assn. race Sunday afternoon, finished eighth, then flew back to Tennessee for a Sunday night race at Nashville, where he finished second in an All-American Challenge series race.

In 24 hours he completed 798 of a possible 800 laps in three races in three types of cars--with 1,200 miles of travel between races.

“All in a week’s work,” Allison said. “I enjoy all the travel and sometimes I feel like I could race for seven days straight. I love all the little tracks and the people from short-track circuits who have helped me to achieve the recognition that I enjoy today. I’m looking forward to sandwiching Saugus between qualifying and racing at Riverside.”

Ray Wilkings’ Olimpic Racing Assn. is paying $4,000 to the winner from a total purse of $23,855.

SPRINT CARS--Saturday night’s Kraco-CRA main event at Ascot Park may be upstaged during intermission by the Western Racing Assn.’s 10th annual pre-1950 Antique Race Car Night. Cal Niday, 71, president of the WRA alumni, has 40 old-time cars ready to parade around Ascot’s half-mile of dirt. Among them are the Mel Leighton Special that Jack McGrath drove so successfully, and Joe Gemsa’s 1926 Frontenac that Francis Quinn drove at Legion Ascot. Former Indy 500 winners Parnelli Jones and Sam Hanks are expected to drive some of the old equipment. Niday, incidentally, says it was he, not Duke Nalon, who gave Pancho Carter his first haircut at Indianapolis in 1952. Former motorcycle rider Eddie Wirth, who won last week’s Salute to Indy 50-lap feature, will be back trying to repeat against Bubby Jones, Dean Thompson and points leader Brad Noffsinger.

MIDGETS--Former national champion Ron (Sleepy) Tripp has won United States Auto Club western regional races this year at Santa Maria and Madera, but has yet to win on his home track, Ascot Park. Sunday night he will try again and also will try to wrest the standings lead from Ron Rasmussen of Fresno in the full midget portion of a doubleheader. National Midget Racing Assn. three-quarter midgets will complete the program, with Gary Schroeder and Terry Farrar battling for the championship.

MOTORCYCLES--Final race of the U.S. Suzuki Spring Motocross Series is set for Friday night at Ascot Park. . . . Speedway racing this week on Southland tracks will serve as a final tuneup for the Nissan American Speedway Final June 8 at Long Beach Veterans Stadium. There, five U.S. riders will qualify for the Overseas Final leading to the world championship.

STOCK CARS--Claimer stocks will run Friday night at Saugus Speedway as a prelude to the Miller High Life 150 the next night.

Bill Elliott