[media-credit name=”David Yeazell” align=”alignright” width=”300″]
[/media-credit]One moment Elliott Sadler thought he was going to win the race and the next he was wondering how he made it to the finish line.
Sadler has unofficially been credited with a third place finish in Saturday’s NASCAR Nationwide Series (NNS) DRIVE4COPD 300 at Daytona. He came out of the mess in turn four to finish behind surprise winner James Buescher and Brad Keselowski. He had been pushing Tony Stewart toward the lead when cars started spinning and swept them into it.
“Well, it’s normal Daytona. You never know till you see the checkered flag what’s really going to happen,” Sadler said.
“Tony and I came apart on the last restart a little bit. The 6 [Ricky Stenhouse] wasn’t really pushing us that hard. I came apart from Tony, so I lost a little momentum. We had a ton of steam coming in backstretch. We definitely were going to win that race. We were coming on the outside.
“I don’t know if Kurt [Busch] came up, Joey [Logano] came with him, all I know is the 20 came up in front of us, pinched us all in the wall. I kept looking in my side mirror waiting for everybody to go by. I just hung a left off the wall, got lucky, found my way back to the start/finish line.”
Kurt Busch was leading with younger brother Kyle pushing him. As they entered turn three the tandem of Joey Logano and Trevor Bayne jumped to the outside as Sadler pushed Stewart to the outside as well. The three wide didn’t last long as Kurt Busch started to move up the track and soon everyone was in the turn four wall.
Somehow Sadler was able to swing to the left and avoid the carnage. NASCAR was left trying to figure out what cars were where when the caution came out as drivers climbed from their mangled machines that were scattered all over the racetrack. One single wreck had just taken out nearly the entire field and the man running 11th came out the winner.
“My spotter told me we’re going all the way to the top,” said Sadler. “I didn’t know how many tandems were in front of us when I got to turn three. He kept telling me what move we were going to make. Went to the top, okay, a pack and a half. One tandem, two cars are split. At that time I saw the 20 car [Logano] come across Tony’s nose and wreck us all.
“I’m not saying he turned right. I guess he went to the right to miss Kurt. Everybody is trying to win the race. Of course they’re going to try to do everything they can to win the race. Sometimes you’re in the middle of it. Sometimes you miss it. It’s Daytona guys. This is Daytona. I think everybody gets a free pass to take free chances when you’re here for Speedweeks.”
It wasn’t the ending Sadler had hoped or thought it would be but he’ll take it. As the dust has settled he finds himself the point leader by four over Timmy Hill. Coming off a letdown of a season in 2011 in terms of the championship, Sadler’s glad to be off to a better start.
Last year he didn’t win a race and spent much of the season attempting to come from behind to catch Ricky Stenhouse Jr. He never did and finished second, not quite living up the expectations that had been set forth in what was supposed to be his resurgence back onto the NASCAR map.
For 2012 Sadler and his newly formed Richard Childress Racing team are going for broke. RCR has won five NNS championships and has graduated 2011 Camping World Truck Series champion Austin Dillon to the NNS as Sadler’s teammate. There’s no better time or place for the Virginia native to shine and so far so good after opening day.
“Great effort by my team,” said Sadler.
“Last year we finished 38th and felt like we had to dig ourselves out of a hole for the first four or five races. Today we felt like we had a chance to win the race, led some laps. We’re very happy for that result. Kudos to my team. We got two top-five finishes. I think if we would have left the shop last week, we’d have two top-five finishes and two cars in one piece, we would be very happy. That’s the results we have.”
