1on1: Bill Elliott

He recently turned 53 years of age, and he's still racing.

In fact, Bill Elliott will race not only in the Sprint Cup Series at Atlanta Motor Speedway this weekend (probably for the final time in his career), but also in the Bill Elliott 50 Red Dirt Dash Late Model event at Dixie Speedway in Woodstock, Ga., which is located just north of Atlanta.

The guy just can't get enough. Named NASCAR's most popular driver by fans a remarkable (and record) 16 times, winner of 44 Cup races and 55 poles, Elliott talked with NASCAR.COM about life in the fast lane and how he might eventually slow down someday, sooner rather than later.

Q: You're coming off a pretty respectable run at Martinsville, where you placed 16th in the No. 21 Ford you drive part-time now for Wood Brothers Racing. How did that feel?

Elliott: Yeah, that wasn't too bad for us. I was glad it was still rollin' at the end of the day.

Q: Could you tell us a little bit about this charity deal you've got going on this Saturday at Dixie Speedway, where you won your first race three decades ago?

Elliott: We're trying to base a little bit off Tony [Stewart's Prelude to the Dream dirt-track race at Eldora Speedway in Ohio]. He helps Victory Junction Gang, and I'm trying to help the Children's Health Care of Atlanta. We're trying to raise some money for 'em. We'd like to try to make it an annual deal, somehow, some way.

We kind of got sidetracked on this deal. [Track owner] Mickey's son Mike Swims [who operated the track] died last year. He had been fighting cancer for a while. So we had it all set up and when that all happened it threw everything in a tizzy. Then we were going to do it the first of the year, and I just don't think Mickey could deal with it that early [after his son's death].

Q: Talk a little bit about running Cup events in Atlanta, your home track where you've won five times in your career?

Elliott: I haven't been as successful on the new configuration as I was on the old one. But Atlanta is still home. I still like to go there and run that racetrack. It's always been a lot of fun.

But I think the Wood boys -- Len and Eddie -- it's an ongoing deal. You're tryin' to build a better mousetrap, a better race team and it's just hard to do. A single-car entity, I don't know if it's impossible, but it sure makes it tough.

Q: A lot of the smaller teams feel like they're fighting an uphill battle, don't they?

Elliott: Take Roush, for example. Roush has got his five [car] deal, and he's got a piece of that 28 and 38 [the cars fielded by Yates Racing]. I mean, Ray Charles could see that. It just makes it tough.

There is so much information there, and there is so little time. As a single-car entity, you can only do so much. If you go out and even if you test all day -- let's say you make three runs an hour, and you make three 10- or 15-lap runs an hour with your changes, where you come in and make changes in between and then go back out and you run. In an eight-hour day, that's 24 runs for a single-car entity. Well, you multiply that by four or five or six teams, they've got so much information on you just in one day that you can never catch up.

Fast facts

What	Pep Boys Auto 500
When	2:20 p.m. ET Sunday
TV	ABC, 1 p.m. ET
Radio	PRN (Sirius Ch. 128), 1:15 ET

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Q: Then they also have so many more people who can sift through that information and try to figure out what it all means ...

Elliott: That's one aspect of it. Another aspect of it is you've got so many different minds thinking about doing different things. How much does that add to it? You've got one crew chief saying, well, he looks at it one way; then you've got another crew chief saying, well, maybe we ought to look at it another way. There are things you don't even think about in that respect.

It's just a part of it. It's kind of David and Goliath. Some days you can beat the giant, but then some days, more than likely if you go day in and day out, he's gonna beat you.

Q: Do you think that's good for NASCAR, or do you think they're going down a path they should go down?

Elliott: Well, it's done set. It's done gotten too far. And the point is, what are you gonna do about it now? There is going to be a select group of people -- because this is a sport where you gotta have deep pockets. Even if you have multi-car teams, if you have one car or two that's maybe lacking total sponsorship, and then you've got one or two more, maybe they can cover it -- where you can subsidize and spread it out over the three, four, five, six teams. You look at the Ford deal, and there's Roush's deal along with Yates and then there is the 21 car. And that's it.

Q: You really think you'll be able to step out of the car for good at the end of this season? What if the Wood Brothers come knocking on your door again to maybe run a few more races for them again next season?

Elliott: At this point in time, I don't know. I think I'm just going to look at the next few races and see if I can help 'em out maybe, but it would just be a short-team deal. A few and that's it.

I think right now they're trying to sell stuff, and they don't really have a whole lot else going on. If we can turn around and get something going here -- and keep it going -- that's one thing. If it's gonna go and turn around and change directions on you, then no, I don't want to do this anymore.

It's just like when I look back on Ray [Evernham's] deal, and when I decided to stop runnin' full-time. I had been with Mike Ford a long time and he and I had been very successful together and he was leavin'. And man, it's just hard to start over. We've been through some changes [at Wood Brothers Racing] and now we've kind of turned the corner a little bit. But there again, unless they can put several deals together, it's gonna be tough on them boys anyway. You never can predict the future.

As far as me ever runnin' a full-time deal again? No, never. Would I run a couple first off? Yeah, maybe. But that would be it. And if they could find something to fill the void before the first of next year, I wouldn't even do that. What I'm saying, I guess, is let's get through the next few races -- and then what they find out and what they come up with will be the determining factor.

Q: Getting away from the track, is your driver development program still in full swing?

Elliott: Well, right now we're strugglin' with it. We're tryin' to find sponsorship, and we've had a very difficult time. It's another thing that we need to try to get going. We haven't really been able to put anything together.

Q: Is that a byproduct of this economy?

Elliott: A lot of areas have not been so affected, per se. But here in the Atlanta area, there are a lot of people who have been involved in this development deal. And what I've been sayin' is you look back on the incredible growth we've had the last 10 or 15 years, and you can understand why. It's been too easy to get credit. Some people have taken advantage of the system, and there's been too much money floating around because there has been too much credit. And now we're payin' the price.

We're at a real crossroads as to where we're gonna end up. You take a look at racin' and it takes a lot of money. It ain't like other sports, where you can take a kid down to the sporting-goods store and go buy up a bunch of stuff, and then go and play in your backyard every afternoon. Racin' doesn't have that luxury. It's always going to cost a lot of money to go test or run or buy parts and tires. That's what separates it. And what I think it's going to become, it's going to become a sport where only the people who have the money to be able to afford it are gonna be able to do it. It's gonna be the kid who's got a lot of money or has access to a lot of money. Look at Joey Logano. I think that's a prime example.

Q: Your own son Chase will soon turn 13. What's Chase driving these days?

Elliott: He ran a Bandelero this past winter. And then in the spring, in April, he started runnin' a Legend car. And he's done real well. He's won three races now -- one at Atlanta, two at Lanier. And we went to the nationals in Minnesota the other week -- and he qualified third and finished sixth out of a lot of cars. I guess they had 60 or 70 cars there in his class. He did a really good job. It was his first really big race -- with kids from all around the nation who came in.

Q: What do you think of the new car being run full-time for the first time this season in the Sprint Cup Series?

Elliott: It's not bad, but it's so tempermental. I mean, you either hit it or you miss it. I'm all for the safety aspect of it. It has been a more durable, safer car -- and that has been very appealing for a lot of people. The other side of it is it is what it is and you've got to make the best of it.

When I talk to fans, what they have a hard time with is it's just a generic car. It don't resemble anything a person would drive on the road. They all look the same. Normally, a lot of places I go to do different things, I'll ask the fans what they think. And what they feel gave NASCAR its identity was through the '60s and the '70s and you'd see that Ford run around the racetrack, and they'd say, 'Well, that looks like the one I drive into the racetrack.' And if that car won, they could go to work on Monday and boast, 'Hey, man, that's what I drive.' Where with this thing, that's where you disconnect with the fans.

Q: Speaking of the fans, what does it mean to you to have been voted the most popular driver in NASCAR 16 times?

Elliott: That meant a lot. I had a lot of people that were very supportive. Granted, maybe I wasn't a flashy kind of guy like Tony [Stewart] or Jeff [Gordon)] or some of those guys.

But I think along with the way we started, and being able to have that fan base, was more important to my career than anything else. Granted, the wins and everything else was all part of it. But man, I'm gonna tell you what, we started with nothin'. I mean nothin'. We built it out of Georgia and won a championship here with a group. We didn't go to North Carolina; we didn't buy our way in. We didn't do all that stuff, and I think that was important, too.

Q: How much time have you been spending in Colorado lately? Rumor has it you're a heck of a snowboarder ...

Elliott: Not as much as I had been. We moved out there in '05 for a couple of years, and that first winter or two I probably spent 35 or 40 days on the mountain. Last year was not as much. Chase was starting to race more and then we decided to move back to Georgia. So it's been less and less. But I love it out there. It could be more once I get some of this other stuff behind me. I've kind of put that on the backburner, so to speak.

Q: What do you enjoy about snowboarding so much?

Elliott: Just gettin' away. Just being in the elements and being away from everything and everybody. You're in your own little world. I guess I relate it to either flyin' or drivin' a racecar.

To me, the greatest thing about drivin' a racecar is that when I sit down in that thing and put the window net up and get started, you're in your own little world. It's just you and that piece of machinery. And you're tryin' to get it to do what you want it to do and not what it might want to do.