Saturday, 07 October 2006

Elliott Sadler and his brother, Hermie, presented Kyle Petty and the Victory Junction Gang Camp a check for $25,000 Friday morning at Talladega Superspeedway on behalf of the Elliott Sadler and Hermie Sadler Foundation.

KYLE PETTY (No. 45 Petty Enterprises/Victory Junction Dodge Charger)
“The cool thing about this Nextel Cup garage area is everybody helps each other. Hermie and Elliott are obviously deeply involved in the autism society. They do tons of work with that. We’re going to start seeing autism kids at the Victory Junction Camp this year. This is kinda our way of kicking that off and getting headed in that direction. These two guys have gone out of their way for years to raise money for charities all over the country. Obviously this is just another step in that direction.

“25 Grand will probably send 20 kids to camp. At the same time, from that perspective, it would probably feed two weeks of camp. That’s 800 people for two weeks. There’s a lot of different ways to look at it. From sending kids to camp or bringing their parents to camp with them to being able to bring their siblings to camp, to being able to feed them, to be able to pay for some of the medicine, to be able to fly some of the doctors from California back here, there’s a lot of stuff.”

ELLIOTT SADLER (No. 19 Dodge Dealers/UAW Dodge Charger)
“Hermie and I are just proud to be a part of it. The Victory Junction Gang is something this whole garage really stands behind. We try to do a little bit at a time when we can, and it’s something we take a lot of pride in.”

YOU’VE WON TWO STRAIGHT TALLADEGA POLES. ARE YOU GOING FOR THREE IN A ROW? “No, we just came here to race. We talked about trying to go for the pole, but I told them let’s not worry about it. I want to run up front, so we’re strictly in race trim. Our first time together here, we want to make sure we race good on Sunday. It doesn’t really matter where you qualify, even though poles are fun. It would be neat to try to get three in a row, but we just want to get our Charger drafting good and handling good. I know I’ve got two teammates that we can work with, so we’re just concerned about Sunday.”

COMMENT ON THE NEW TRACK SURFACE “It’s going to be really smooth. I don’t think tires will be an issue. I think pit strategy will be an issue, so track position is going to be key. Tire wear should be OK and the track should be smooth. We’ll go from there. Really everybody is kinda flying blind.”

IS PIT ROAD AS TIGHT HERE AS IT WAS AT KANSAS LAST WEEK? “It’s pretty tight, but they extended it two feet by two feet on the length and width of them. They made pit road 10 feet wider. We’ve got a little more room here on pit road than we’ve had in the past, so that will help us out a little bit.”

DID YOU EVER FIGURE OUT WHAT HAPPENED IN THE PITS LAST WEEK IN KANSAS? “No, it was just circumstances. I was coming out and Jamie (McMurray) was coming in. You could point fingers at me. It was my fault. You could point fingers at Jamie. It was just a racing deal. Nobody means to bump into each other on pit road, especially Jamie and I as good friends as we are. I hate it for everybody at Evernham Motorsports because we had a really good racecar. We had a good chance to run in the top five. I’ve been very happy with how we’ve been running. We’ve just had a little bit of bad luck here and there that’s kind of hurt us some the past few weeks, but I can’t complain about the way we’re running. Ray is giving me great equipment, and we’re making the most of it.”

ARE YOU SURPRISED WE DON’T SEE MORE PIT ROAD CRASHES? “Yeah, it should happen a lot more. Usually we’re more careful getting in and out of the pits. We were just trying to do two tires and leave real fast. I probably wasn’t paying attention enough, but we’re going to try to work on it. Drivers usually do a good job of getting off and on pit road. We have some tight pit roads, but we should be OK here at Talladega this weekend.”

WHAT’S THE STRATEGY FOR SUNDAY? “I’m going to do what my car lets me do. I’ve tried every different bit of strategy here. I actually like running in the top five or top eight because when it gets crunch time you need to be in the front of the field. I have run in the back, but it makes it a lot harder when you get to that last 40-50 laps. Trying to work your way up through traffic is tough. You can do it that way. Dale Jarrett won the race here last year like that. That is an option, but I’d rather be running up front somewhere and do it that way.”

IS IT SAFER IN THE BACK? “I think it is safer running around in the back, but it’s harder at the end. You’ve got to be there at the end. That’s what we’re going to work on.”