BILL ELLIOT
No.9 Dodge Dealer Intrepid R/T

Evernham Motorsports Teleconference Highlights:

"Bill, you've raced around the track many times against many drivers. Can you tell us mentally and physically what you think is inside a good racecar driver that's not in most of us."

"Well, it's more instinct than anything…learning the car control and instincts and the places to put it, plus knowing what you want the car to do to make maximum speed around the race track."

More from Elliot:

Getting Loose: the feeling, the fear.

"I feels the same as slipping on ice but your speed is a lot greater. If you're driving on ice or snow, you're going maybe 40 mph, but if you are at Daytona or Talladega you're going maybe 200 mph. You don't think about it (fear), you deal with the circumstances. Dirt car guys drive their cars that way…sideways."

"Take Atlanta Motor Speedway today when they first repaved it, when we had to run hard tires on a fresh surface, you had less of an error factor where it was harder to save a car. Today, the speeds are down a bit, we're on an older track with softer tires where the car is a bit more manageable, even if it does get out of shape. We might go to the same race track five different times and deal with five different circumstances…the tires, the aero-specs for that day, the surface temperature, and the surface of the track, whether it's new or used.

"I don't think about it (getting loose) as long as you get the car back under you, the near misses, when you're almost on the edge. That's when you're becoming a passenger instead of a driver, because you are on that fine line.

"There are some very good drivers coming along. It's a different era. That's the part of the evolution. These guys are very good or they wouldn't be there, and they've got excellent equipment which is half the battle."

"One reason…NASCAR rules. Everything is the same…templates, track conditions. It's hard for one guy to be dominant when everything is equal. That's the direction that NASCAR is looking for…equal competition. It used to be a man could be innovative. Now, you tear down an engine and everybody can buy the same parts. Before, you could buy parts and pieces that would have that edge over the competition."

"You can't afford to make mistakes. Take it a race at a time. You have to be aggressive and you've got to be very lucky…not every race, but you can go over the line and it costs a lot. It's how far you push that line. It's hard to be consistent. The guy with the least amount of bad luck is going to win the championship."

"You can get caught up in someone else's mistakes or you are the one making a mistake. You have to get to that fine line and be as competitive as everybody. It's up to me to not make a mistake. That's the thing you have to look at in this business, and you see some of the guys who have a fast car who make a mistake on or off the race track, on pit row, or the guy having a little bad luck elsewhere.

"There needs to be a balance there. We have got to get a balance. We need to stay accessible to some extent, but I don't know in your office in the middle of your work that you would want people to interrupt you. It's a fine line. We have to work through that. NASCAR has to help and decide how they want to deal with this. In today's racing world we do a three day weekend where the guys go and bust their rear-ends to qualify, bust their rear-ends again and then race Sunday. Most of the drivers are accessible through the dealings they do with their sponsors. There has to be some way we can satisfy both realms and make it work for everyone."

"Evernham's first win in Miami last year …that brought the Evernham umbrella together. Ray went into the Dodge deal to build an ongoing program, and to do it the first year out, that says a lot. To come into Dodge with a clean sheet of paper… that say a lot."