NASCAR Hall-of-Famer Bill Elliott kicked off his dominating 1985 season by clobbering the field in the Daytona 500.   

Last weekend on the Charlotte Roval, 23 year-old NASCAR phenom Chase Elliott put on a driving school for the stock car veterans, charging from last to first to score a memorable victory, the sixth of his brief career. The dominating performance brought to mind another remarkable driver: his father, Bill Elliott.  Chase’s dad scored 44 wins over 37 years in NASCAR’s premier series, but arguably his most dominating season came in 1985, when he scored 11 poles and 11 wins in 28 races, kicking off the year with a crushing victory in the Daytona 500.

We can’t say the race was a thriller. Truth is, Elliott stunk up the show at Daytona in ’85. Along with Bill’s driving ability, the Elliott crew enjoyed an additional edge on the big tracks at Daytona and Talladega: the engine-building skills of brother Ernie Elliott, who could squeeze more horsepower out of a Ford pushrod V8 than most anyone in the biz at that time. For this event, the Elliott boys set a new pole record speed at 205+ mph. And as  this video from NASCAR All Out demonstrates, there was really only one car that could run with the Elliott Ford that day: Cale Yarborough’s Waddell Wilson-prepared Thunderbird.  But when Yarborough retired on lap 62 with a busted engine, it became a one-man show. However, NASCAR officials did manage to make things interesting when they held up Elliott in the pits for nearly a lap to tape up a headlamp door. Here’s one of the more dominating performances in Daytona 500 history. Video below.