Motor Racing Digest

Photo Credit: Rusty Jarrett MRD/CIA

Posted By: Holly Blake, Follow @HollyLBlake

38-year-old NASCAR veteran Elliott Sadler began racing go-karts at age 7, winning the Virginia State Karting Championship in 1983 and 1984.  He was the 1995 South Boston Speedway Track Champion and the 2011 NASCAR Nationwide Series Most Popular Driver.  Will he be the NNS Champion at the end of the 2012 season?  Time will tell. Sadler certainly will be focused on it.

Sadler raced his first NASCAR Nationwide series event in 1995 in the Ford Credit 300 and his first NASCAR Sprint Cup series event in 1998 in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.  His first win in the NNS was in 1997 at Pocono and his first NSCS victory was at Bristol in the Food City 500 in 2001. Unfortunately, his last win was the Pop Secret 500 in California in 2004.  Nearly seven years ago.  And, his last NNS victory is even further back in 1998.

This year he will race full-time for Richard Childress racing in the NASCAR nationwide series.  Sadler just completed a successful season with Kevin Harvick Inc. finishing second place in the standings in the NNS in 2011.  He had 12 top-five, 24 top-10 finishes and one DNF.  Not too shabby in the stats department.  At the same time however Sadler must have been disappointed having not won in 2011 – something I am sure it will be on his agenda for 2012.  In order to compete for the championship – it must be.  He must win, possibly more than once to claim the trophy.

Sadler has competed in the NASCAR Camping World Truck series, the Nationwide series, and the Sprint Cup series, but he has yet to find true success in competing for the championship trophy at the end of the season. While Sadler was competitive last year with KHI, without a victory, and with some bad luck, it appeared the driver and his team were playing catch up much of the time.  While he was very appreciative of the opportunity to drive for the Harvicks which he says revived his career, he remained winless and came up just short of the prize all drivers strive for.

RCR picking up the team and keeping it together for the most part is huge for Sadler.  He and crew chief Ernie Cope will continue to work together. The duo communicate well and are both fairly level headed. Perhaps they both need to be a bit more excitable.  There is no doubt Sadler can drive a car.  Also no doubt he is competitive but he must have an edge.  Something to catapult him with an advantage over so many of the much younger competitors. His experience should count for something but it will take more than that. It will take solid team work and near excellence.

Joining forces at RCR should help that along.  It will surely play a part in that competitive edge necessary to compete with Roush-Fenway Racing and the likes of Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (last year’s NNS Champion) as well as the Joe Gibbs racing camp.

Does he have what it takes to be the champion?  Is the No. 2 team championship caliber?  Let’s all watch together and see what unfolds during what should be a very exciting 2012 NASCAR Nationwide series season!