Georgia speedways have also played an important role in NASCAR’s development and growth. Elliot was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2015. As of 2004 he had forty-four career wins (placing him on the all-time list), and as of 2002 had won NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver Award a record sixteen times. In 1985 he became the first driver to win $1 million in a single race, earning the nickname “Million-Dollar Bill.” In 1988 he won the Winston Cup championship. By the mid-1980s Elliott, often referred to as “Awesome Bill from Dawsonville,” became one of the most popular drivers on the tour. In 1976 Elliott left north Georgia with his brothers Ernie (as engine builder and crew chief) and Dan (as transmission builder) to try his luck on the Winston Cup (later Sprint Cup) circuit. The most significant contributions since those early days have come from another Dawsonville native, Bill Elliott. Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association IncorporatedĪlthough in later years Georgia drivers, owners, and mechanics would not play such a prominent role in NASCAR history, Georgians have continued to contribute in important ways. Hall was too old to duplicate his prewar success in the postwar era. In 1941 Seay, arguing with his cousin Woodrow Anderson about a shipment of sugar, was fatally shot. Unfortunately, despite playing such a foundational role, neither was able to take advantage of the growth of the sport after World War II (1941-45). Hall and Seay dominated the stock-car racing scene in the Southeast and Midwest in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Parks provided his cousins with top-notch cars prepared by the Atlanta garage owner and mechanic Red Vogt. In 1938 Parks’s moonshine-running cousins Roy Hall (memorialized in the Jim Croce song “Rapid Roy, That Stock Car Boy”) and Lloyd Seay, both from Dawson County, persuaded Parks to bankroll their fledgling racing careers. Although he seldom drove in races, Raymond Parks, a native of Dawson County and a prominent Atlanta liquor-store owner, financed operations for a number of the most important early racers. Indeed, several of the most popular and influential individuals in the early history of southern stock car racing came from this north Georgia town. Many observers consider Dawsonville one of the birthplaces of NASCAR.
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