Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / Jeff Hammond Talks 1985 NASCAR Showdown: Darrell Waltrip vs Bill Elliott | Kenny Wallace Show

Transcript

Jeff Hammond Talks 1985 NASCAR Showdown: Darrell Waltrip vs Bill Elliott | Kenny Wallace Show · Kenny Wallace Media

• 0:00
  I'm a lucky man. 1985, You all told me that Bill Elliott won 11
• 0:07
  races and Daryl Waltrip only won three, but he won the
• 0:11
  championship. And this, this man right here
• 0:14
  was the crew chief, the great Jeff Hammond.
• 0:16
  All right, Jeff, you started to tell me the story.
• 0:19
  Tell me what you remember about that year.
• 0:21
  Consistency, I mean, that was the way we started out.
• 0:24
  We had a top five finish at Daytona and we just started
• 0:28
  racking up top 10s, top fives all along the way and just kept
• 0:31
  the pressure on them. Eventually.
• 0:34
  You hear about this all the time folks and this this is go back
• 0:37
  and look at stats. It'll tell you.
• 0:39
  He wound up widdling them racing, but he started having
• 0:41
  mechanical problems late in the season.
• 0:44
  Mentally they got they got behind.
• 0:47
  Next thing you know, we wound up in Rockingham and that kind of
• 0:50
  like broke everything wide open and they had more trouble than
• 0:53
  we rode into Riverside, CA and let.
• 0:57
  Me break this down a little bit more.
• 0:59
  I'm just old enough to know we're about same age.
• 1:02
  You're touch older than me. But do you think all the stress
• 1:06
  of, you know, $1,000,000 bill going for the $1,000,000
• 1:09
  championship, the Elliott's out of Dawsonville.
• 1:11
  Do you think that that played a part?
• 1:14
  A part do you think that played a part of?
• 1:20
  Yeah, I have a part. The thing is, Kenny, you know,
• 1:23
  it's hard to say what went on because, you know, the sport was
• 1:27
  so different and Bill, you know, was an intricate part of the,
• 1:30
  the, the team. I mean, you know, he was a
• 1:32
  family run operation, Ernie and his brother and Dan and dad and
• 1:38
  all this stuff right here. So when Bill was making making
• 1:42
  all these highlights and I say we wind up winning $1,000,000
• 1:46
  and then he's calling you $1,000,000 deal.
• 1:48
  Well, I don't think he was spending as much time as he
• 1:50
  needed to work on his car. And they made some had a mental
• 1:53
  let down as far as that's concerned, because Bill Elliott
• 1:55
  is a whale of a race car driver. You know, he wind up getting
• 1:58
  himself a championship eventually.
• 2:00
  But the main thing is I think he learned that sometimes, you
• 2:05
  know, you've got you got to stay focused.
• 2:06
  And I think they lost for this. And your driver, the great
• 2:10
  Darrell Waltrip, my dear friend, he was probably the best at
• 2:14
  psychology. And then and then we seen Tony
• 2:16
  Stewart copy Yeah, you know, DW with a lot of psychology going
• 2:21
  to Miami, you know, years later. But what made Daryl so good and
• 2:26
  you so good psychological? Did you just let Daryl do what
• 2:29
  he wanted to do, or did you guys talk about maybe making a
• 2:32
  statement that would? It was.
• 2:33
  Natural. Was this natural for us?
• 2:36
  I mean, we cut up, you know, we know we could say something and
• 2:39
  we know we shouldn't say anything.
• 2:41
  You know, Daryl, he, he was the guy that the gift for gab.
• 2:44
  He knew how to get him a somebody's skin and the big
• 2:48
  thing is, you know, we kept coming back.
• 2:50
  We wouldn't go away, you know what I'm saying?
• 2:52
  He. Just.
• 2:53
  Won't go away. Every time you look in the
• 2:55
  rearview mirror, Bill did, he saw us.
• 2:57
  And every time, you know, he'd win a race, he'd look down there
• 3:00
  and we were second or third or fourth or fifth, and we did that
• 3:03
  all year long. Thank you thank you Jeff.
• 3:05
  I appreciate it perfect time. I I saw Jeff today here at
• 3:08
  Charlotte. Most people I said, oh boy,
• 3:10
  perfect. So hope y'all enjoyed this.
• 3:12
  Three wins, wins the championship over 11.
• 3:16
  And there's a big debate out there that, oh, Corey Hahn,
• 3:20
  Connor Zilich, if they don't win the championship, it will be a
• 3:23
  tragedy. I said hold on, hold on.
• 3:25
  I got a better response. Board yourself.
• 3:27
  You got, you got, you got to finish.
• 3:29
  I mean, they got to finish strong.
• 3:30
  And The thing is they've got great teams and I think they got
• 3:33
  a lot of focus amongst those organizations.
• 3:35
  And even when, even when they have a little oops, somebody
• 3:38
  reacts in front of them at the beginning of the race and
• 3:39
  they've had it interlikely, what did they do?
• 3:42
  Rally back. Yeah, all right.
• 3:44
  See you next time.