Neil Bonnett and Bill Elliott would dominate the last 100 laps in the 1982 World 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway in these boxy Ford Thunderbirds. Bonnett would win by two car lengths over Elliott taking his final lead with thirteen laps to go. They would be the only cars on the lead lap at the end of the 400-lap race. This was Elliott's second career second place finish in his winless Winston Cup career to date. He would run second six more times until finally breaking through with that first Winston Cup win at Riverside International Raceway November 20, 1983, in the last race on that years NASCAR Winston Cup schedule. This was the lead photo in Autoweek's coverage of the 1982 World 600. A prominent NASCAR sponsor representative at that time asked to buy a copy of this photo shortly after seeing it in Autoweek. I made the print and mounted it on a nice matt, then had it signed by both Neil and Bill before I delivered it to him. I wish I had got them to sign another one for me.
Bill Elliott at Darlington Raceway in 1987. Elliott was a five-time winner at the historic 1.366-mile track, including three Southern 500 victories and a season sweep of its events in 1985. His remarkable Darlington record consisted of 52 Cup starts with only four races listed as DNF. He completed 97.8% of his laps there running 17,477 of a possible 17,868. He finished 42.3 % of the time in the Top 5 and 67.3% in the Top Ten. This photo appeared in the book, "50 First Victories - Nascar Drivers' Breakthrough Wins," by Al Pearce and Mike Hembree.
Cale Yarborough leads Darrell Waltrip through turn four at the February 29,1976 Carolina 500 at Rockingham, NC. Yarborough would win the first of his three in a row Winston Cup Championships this year. In this race Richard Petty would win by two laps over Waltrip in second and Yarborough in third. The 492-lap race would take 4:24:08 to run with five cautions for 45 laps. Petty would lead the final 220 laps of the race in his win. Both of these cars are listed as Chevrolets in the race rundown. Getting a close look here at the different detail work on the grills and duct work on the noses of the two cars gives an insight into the license teams had when bringing a car to the track in these days.
