| Home | About Elliott | Appearances | 19 Team | Fan Club | Foundation | Souvenirs | SFC Member Photos | |
|
Sadler and Stanley Tools Dodge Team Take Long Road to Top-20 at Richmond
RICHMOND, Va. -- Elliott Sadler and the No. 19 Stanley Tools Dodge team survived big wrecks, brake problems, yellow and red flags and an exciting ending to the 400-lap race at Richmond International Raceway on Saturday night.
Starting eighth at the .75-mile oval, Sadler would race in the top-15 and then into the top-five through the first 77 laps. After a lap 67 caution, Team Director Rodney Childers called for four tires, fuel and no adjustments when Sadler came on to pit road in eighth.
The crew leapt into action and knocked off a pit stop good enough to put Sadler back out in fifth place. From the lap 77 restart, the handling of the car went away from where it was earlier and Sadler slid back through the running positions.
By lap 115, he was back to 20th place saying the car was “extremely tight and the brakes were starting to go” on his Dodge. From there, he would fall back to 29th place by lap 170 now saying he had “no to very little braking” power. Through several caution pit stops for mid-race incidents, the car responded to tape removal from the front grill and brake air ducts.
On lap 230, an 11-car wreck just behind where Sadler was running brought out the red flag. This allowed time for not only the brakes to cool, but for Sadler and Childers to talk about the car and future pit strategy. A combination of hard driving, a better handling car, more cautions and pit penalties aided the No. 19 Stanley Tools team move up the running order
Running in the mid-20’s until lap 360, Sadler survived three more cautions to earn more positions. When the race ended four laps into overtime, the No. 19 Stanley Tools Dodge finished in 20th place.
The team gained one position in points moving to 25th place where they now trail 24th by two points and 20th by 45.
Elliott Sadler quotes:
"It was just a frustrating night for our team. We started eighth and ran pretty decent in the beginning only to have our brakes go away on us. We lost a ton of spots early and just couldn't get where we needed to after making adjustments. Once we took tape off the grill and brake ducts, the car responded and we held our own.
"Towards the end, all kinds of things were happening out there to keep it exciting. I was just trying to avoid all that and bring our Stanley Dodge home in one piece. The crew did a great job on pit road, we just need to get more consistent on the track and earn the good finishes this team is capable of achieving.
"I hate that big wreck took out my so many other cars for us to pick up spots, but we lost a bunch last week (Talladega) the same way. It was typical short track racing where things happen so fast. We'll just get all we can out of the Charlotte test this week and then head for Darlington.”
After two days of testing at Lowe’s Motor Speedway on Monday and Tuesday, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series heads to the newly-paved Darlington Raceway. Where, once again, they will race under the lights on Saturday night.
© Copyright 2008 by ElliottSadler.com, All Rights Reserved
|
|
|
Copyright Notice: |