NASCAR Hall opens door to Bill Elliott, four others

Mike Hembree | Special for USA TODAY Sports

Three former NASCAR champions, an African-American pioneer and a driver who became one of the sport's most popular are scheduled to be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in a ceremony Friday in Charlotte, N.C.

Bill Elliott, Fred Lorenzen, Rex White and the late Joe Weatherly and Wendell Scott make up this year's class, the sixth to be inducted into the hall.

Elliott won 44 races and one Sprint Cup championship (1988) in a driving career that began in 1976. Along the way, Elliott's slow Southern drawl, down-home personality and determined driving style attracted a huge fan following. Fans voted him NASCAR's most popular driver 16 times before he asked that his name be removed from consideration for the award.

Two of Elliott's achievements are likely to be topics of stock car racing discussion for many years to come.

In April 1987, before restrictor plates choked horsepower at NASCAR's giant tracks in Daytona Beach, Fla. and Talladega, Ala., Elliott posted a qualifying lap at 212.809 miles per hour at Talladega Superspeedway, the fastest in series history.

Two years earlier, he won the Winston Million, a $1 million bonus he earned by winning three of NASCAR's biggest races — at Daytona International Speedway, Talladega and Charlotte Motor Speedway. That produced the nickname "Million Dollar Bill," one that competed with "Awesome Bill From Dawsonville," a reference to his mountain hometown of Dawsonville, Ga.

Elliott's son, Chase, won the Xfinity Series championship last season and will be racing full-time in the Sprint Cup Series in 2016.

PHOTOS: Bill and Chase Elliott's hometown of Dawsonville, Ga.

Lorenzen was one of the first drivers from outside the South to win the favor of NASCAR fans on a wide scale.

The Elmhurst, Ill., native won 26 races between 1961 and 1967 while running partial schedules, most for the dynamic and successful Holman-Moody Ford team, which Lorenzen described as a "diamond factory."

His Hollywood good looks earned Lorenzen the nickname "Golden Boy," and his aggressive driving style led some fans to label him "Fearless Freddy".

Lorenzen stunned stock car racing in 1964 by winning eight times in only 16 races, including five consecutive starts.

Lorenzen retired in 1967, saying he was battling health problems and didn't like life on the road, but he returned to race — with little success — from 1970 to 1972. He later said he regretted leaving the sport too early.

Scott was elected to the hall based not on his performance level but on his perseverance and pioneering.

The first black driver to run the Cup series for an extended period, Scott also made racing history Dec. 1, 1963 when he won a race at Speedway Park in Jacksonville, Fla., becoming the first (and still the only) African-American to win at that level. Buck Baker was flagged the winner of the race, but a scoring check confirmed Scott was the real winner. He later was awarded the trophy.

Darrell Wallace Jr. has since won five times in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, the first at Martinsville Speedway in 2013.

Scott raced for 13 seasons — beginning in 1961 — in NASCAR's top series after success in Sportsman and Modified racing in his native Virginia. He ran his entire career in sub-par equipment with pit-crew work provided mainly by family members. He also faced discrimination on the road, as he and his family were denied entrance to hotels and restaurants in some towns.

Scott died of cancer in 1990 at the age of 69.

PHOTOS: 2015 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductees

Weatherly, who died in a race accident at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway in 1964, bunched a lot of impressive results into a brief Cup career.

Weatherly won the Cup championship in 1962 and 1963 and remains the only Virginian to win the title. In 1961, he won nine times in 25 race appearances, finishing fourth in points. He had scored the first of 25 Cup victories in 1958.

Weatherly was fast friends with driver Curtis Turner. Their off-track antics and major-league parties made them two of the most talked-about drivers of the period and earned Weatherly the nickname "Clown Prince of Racing".

White, 85, is the oldest surviving Cup champion. He won the title in 1960.

A victim of polio as a child, White started racing in the mid-1950s and moved into the Cup series in 1956. He won for the first time in Cup in 1958.

White won seven times on his way to taking the championship in 1960. He retired in 1964, saying he could make more money outside racing.

Follow Hembree on Twitter @mikehembree