NASCAR Cup

Darlington: Elliott Sadler press conference

ELLIOTT SADLER --21-- Motorcraft Taurus (Finished 2nd) "This was very good for us. I'm so proud of these guys. Like Ryan, I was pretty lucky because I didn't really put any scratches on the right side of it. We have to carry this car to Texas, ...

Edited: Apr 15, 2002, 11:45 PM

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ELLIOTT SADLER --21-- Motorcraft Taurus (Finished 2nd)

"This was very good for us. I'm so proud of these guys. Like Ryan, I was pretty lucky because I didn't really put any scratches on the right side of it. We have to carry this car to Texas, so they warned me before the race started. I'm just proud of my guys. We actually had a car loaded up on the trailer to bring it here Thursday and my car owner, Eddie Wood, decided to back it off and bring this car. This is definitely my favorite car and it always has been, so instead of saving it for Texas we decided to bring it here and it paid off. I'm just proud of my guys for making that decision. This is the most fun I've had in a long time. To run in the top five like that all day long at Darlington was pretty fun. I had a great time."

WHAT LED TO THE CHANGE IN PICKING THE CAR? "The boss man said so. We had just struggled at Atlanta and Vegas more than we would have liked and we were just looking at ourselves going, 'We're tired of trying to save cars and pick tracks for the cars,' so we just decided to bring our favorite car. We qualified good with it and we ran great all day. If we would have had a veteran driver in that thing we probably would have had something better for Sterling Marlin. He knows how to get around this race track. I tried him at the end, but I was just way too loose to run with him. I'm telling you, that's the most fun I've had in a long, long time. This is a hard, hard race track, so it really pays off when you can race up front all day and have fun. Dale, Jr. and I worked very well together on the last restart to try and get our lap back, and then again at the end of the race to try to make a run at Sterling. We tried, but we just came up short. I'm proud of my guys, though."

WHAT ABOUT GETTING THROUGH THE BIG WRECK? "It was pretty easy for me because I was in front of it. That was when we got caught a lap down with the cautions. We were a lap down and Dale, Jr., Kevin and myself all kind of took off at the front of the field, like on the tail end of the lead lap. We were pretty upset about being caught a lap down, but then it all kind of worked out for us. I hope those guys are OK. The 20 car took a bad hit. I hope Tony and the rest of the guys are OK. We were just fortunate enough not to be around that. We got lucky on that one."

IS THIS A CONFIDENCE BOOST GOING INTO BRISTOL? "Yeah, I think it does. Man, it feels like I've got a ton of momentum going into Bristol because we feel like we can really win that race. We won it in the spring and I think we were running third in the fall and got in a wreck. We've got a really good piece for that race track, so to finish second here, we have some unexpected momentum going to that race track next week. We're gonna try to use it and we're looking forward to it. That's my favorite race track on the planet. I think it's heaven on earth, so to come off second place and go there next week, I'm pretty pumped up about it."

YOU HAD A GOOD ALL-AROUND WEEKEND. "It's been a long time since we've qualified in the single digits. We're not like Ryan. I think the worst he ever qualifies is like third. This was a great weekend. This is one of my better tracks and we know that. We knew coming into this race track, Bristol and Texas that we need to make up some ground at these three tracks because these are my three strongest tracks that I race at. So, to be able to come here and qualify sixth was great, especially when we had steering problems when we unloaded off the truck and things like that. We went through a lot of anxiety before qualifying on Friday, but it worked out OK for us. There was a lot of hard work that went into this weekend as far as the guys working late Thursday night to get this car ready, and then the problems we had Friday morning. But it all just seemed to play out. This was a great weekend. We needed this as a team. Everybody keeps talking about our momentum from Daytona, but we lost it when we went to Rockingham and struggled there and at Vegas -- tracks that I really like. So, to come to a place that we did not really expect to run this well at is great momentum for our whole team. This is pretty cool for all of us."

-ford racing-

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