Bill Elliott, one of NASCAR’s all-time most popular drivers, has been so frequently talked about this week you’d think he was racing this weekend in the Southern 500. And he almost is.
His son, Chase, will drive the No. 24 Chevrolet on Sunday with one of the best throwback paint schemes on the track, and it’s a nod to Bill’s No. 9 Ford Torino from 1976. For the third year, Darlington Raceway is featuring a throwback theme for the weekend race, highlighting NASCAR history between 1985 and 1989.
The father-son duo loves the eye-catching powder blue color of the car, and longtime racing fans will too. In addition to the tribute to the family’s NASCAR legacy, Chase explained his deeper reasoning for why he thinks the car is so cool.
During his press conference at Darlington Raceway on Friday, Chase said:
“I like our car a lot. It is a car my dad ran a number of years ago — one of the first cars he ran. The cool part about the car we’re running this weekend (is) it’s really not a car that people identify with him. A lot of people don’t even know he ran a baby blue car so pretty cool. He has a lot of history inside of the car that I really didn’t know about. I did some stuff with him the other day and got to learn about kind of just the different things. And he has such a good grasp on the history and how things were back then and why they ran that car.
“And you look at the car — the drive shaft had come out of it at one race, and it beat the hell out of the floorboard and a lot of the things inside of the car. And all they did was just take a hammer to it, fix it enough, put it back together and go the next week. Funny to see that stuff, and I mean, it’s still beat all to crap in there and they just keep on trucking down the road with it. So it was a cool story, and like I said, the coolest thing about it is a lot of people don’t even know about that car or even know he ran it. So hopefully that opens some eyes.”
Chase honoring his dad will continue long beyond Darlington’s throwback weekend.
Hendrick Motorsports announced this week that he will drive the No. 9 car — the same as his dad — for the 2018 season. When he makes the switch, he’ll have driven the No. 24 for two seasons, taking over after Jeff Gordon retired.
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