The 1985 season was undoubtedly the best season of Bill Elliott's career. He scored 11 wins and 11 poles out of 28 races and also won the first Winston Million in the Southern 500 at Darlington. This would give him the nickname "Million Dollar Bill" and "Awesome Bill From Dawsonville". The only major of the four he did not win was the Coca-Cola 600 (a driver needed only to win a "small slam" of the four majors to win the bonus; Elliott, since he retired in 2013, would not finish a Career Grand Slam. However, Elliott had won twice at Charlotte Motor Speedway and had finished runner up in the Coca-Cola 600 twice). This allowed him to become the second NASCAR driver to be featured on the cover of "Sports Illustrated", following Cale Yarborough after his win in the 1977 Daytona 500. Elliott finished second in the championship point standings by 101 points, losing the Winston Cup Championship to Darrell Waltrip after a string of poor finishes in the last quarter of the season. Elliott would set an unprecedented NASCAR record of winning five consecutive pole qualifying sessions in 1985; the June Pocono race, the Firecracker 400, the July races in Pocono and Talladega, and the August Michigan race. That did not include the June Michigan race where qualifying was rained out, and the July Pocono race pole was where he started second, but further investigation led NASCAR to throw out the winning pole time for illegal fuel additives, retroactively awarding Elliott the pole award, money, and credit towards the season-long award for most poles won. At Talladega in the 1985 Winston 500, Elliott was leading when a pit due to a broken oil fitting put him back about 2 laps. He completed one of NASCAR's greatest comebacks by making his way through the field under green and winning the race. Elliott also set a NASCAR modern era record in 1985 for completing the season sweep at 4 different tracks in one season: Pocono, Michigan, Darlington, and Atlanta.