Pit perspective

Fan favorite Elliott says garage crowding needs addressing

The experience of 27 racing seasons has bestowed on Bill Elliott a reservoir that historians and media seek, a cache that younger people in his sport probably should tap: Perspective.

He doesn't toss it around like a box of business cards. You have to seek him out, and sometimes that requires patience. There's always the worry (for me, anyway) that the veterans tire of "What was it like back then?" inquiries, but after practice Saturday at Dover, Elliott was generous with both words and time.

He wolfed down a disposable plate full of pork tenderloin and green beans in the No. 9 hauler.

During the conversation, the point was made that one can't drive forever, and I replied that one probably can't write forever, either.

"Yeah," Elliott agreed as crew chief Mike Ford squeezed past with a piled-high plate. "But you can eat forever."

Don't get the wrong picture. Elliott is very fit, a soon-to-be-47-year-old who abstained from potatoes that afternoon and guzzled two bottles of water with his lunch. He had no trouble providing responses to the topics I lobbed, but the one he expounded on, the one I didn't bring up, was the issue of garage overcrowding.

It's on everybody's minds and tongues right now, almost as much as the Cup series' tightest points race since 1992 -- one of many Elliott career landmarks. The late Alan Kulwicki beat him by 10 points that year, and you wonder if garage congestion was a problem then, several years before NASCAR began its popularity juggernaut.

Go back even further -- 10 more years.

"When I first started racing, there were very few people in the garage area," Elliott said of the late '70s and early '80s. "They absolutely didn't allow women in the garage. Absolutely, positively."

I'd heard this. Hearing Elliott say it magnified the fact. It seems that in 20 years, the NASCAR garage has gone from a mostly closed-shop work area, to part state fair. That's broad, I know, yet the crowds and autograph hounds swarm no matter where the series goes, whither short tracks or superspeedways.

And like most sports-oriented people, Elliott had seen last week's replays of the father-son mugging of Kansas City Royals' coach Tom Gamboa on Comiskey Park's field.

"I think they said, 'Let's go make something happen today. Let's get on TV,'" Elliott said.

His sense of humor had resurfaced; he'd gotten a kick out of the Royals rushing en masse from the dugout. But he understood the incident's gravity, turning serious when I suggested that drivers probably don't have to worry about outright attack; they're protected by a 3,400-pound car.

"Yeah, but we do get out," Elliott said. "And we do get in before the race starts."

Two weeks ago at New Hampshire, Jim Hunter, NASCAR's director of corporate communications, said he'd gone to several drivers' introductions after hearing complaints about excessive crowds during that part of pre-race festivities. According to Hunter, officials are studying the overall crowding problem, working off a security audit commissioned last September and there will be garage-access changes next season.

When he still owned his own team, Elliott said he attended two Miami Dolphins games, thanks to a second-team partnership with former Miami quarterback Dan Marino. Not even a business relationship with a future NFL Hall of Famer was clout enough for stadium security guards.

"I couldn't even get on the field," Elliott said. "Absolutely, positively no. Even though Marino and all that deal, I couldn't get on the sidelines for the game."

Elliott offered another example involving his current team owner, Ray Evernham.

"Ray said he went to a Formula One race and he said he like to never got in the garage," Elliott said.

Understand that Elliott isn't anti-public or anti-fan. He's won 15 consecutive Most Popular Driver awards given annually by the National Motorsports Press Association, and the organization will name the award after him when he retires.

He has, though, almost given up being fan-accessible in the garage.

"We just need to do a better job of figuring out how we take care of the fans, and take care of all the people and all of us in the garage area, too," Elliott said. "[We need to] make it acceptable enough to satisfy the fans, but limit it enough to where [crew] guys can do their job however they need to do it.

"I mean, there's points and times, I got to where I say no anymore. 'Cause, I mean, you can't do it all."

He's got another concern. Although he worries about unaware people darting in front of cars, he's more worried about his crew's working conditions -- the crowds that block equipment, interrupt concentration, press in on the garage workforce.

"Because we get in the cars and our lives are on the line from the guys that are putting the parts and pieces on the car," Elliott said. "Don't distract them from what they're doing."

If that means mandatory autograph sessions outside the garage, so be it. It beats the current amusement park midway atmosphere. No driver wants to alienate fans. Neither do they want to do the truck-to-garage dash that's become a necessity for many.

"It's great to have the fans and the fan base and the level this sport has brought it to," Elliott said. "But we got to come to a compromise. And that is the point that I make. I don't argue with them being in here, and I don't argue with a lot of stuff going on.

"We need an area to maintain it so that the guys can do their job, the fans are not in jeopardy of being run over by a car, or anything happening."

Denise N. Maloof covers NASCAR for CNNSI.com.

 

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