Ford Performance NXS Notes and Quotes
Food City 300 Advance – Bristol Motor Speedway
Friday, August 21, 2015
Elliott Sadler, driver of the No. 1 OneMain Financial Ford Mustang, came to the infield media center following NASCAR XFINITY Series practice to talk about tonight’s race and competing in the Dash 4 Cash.
ELLIOTT SADLER – No. 1 OneMain Financial Ford Mustang – CAN YOU TALK ABOUT COMPETING IN THE DASH 4 CASH TONIGHT? “That’s great. Anytime you’re lucky enough and fortunate enough to be a part of the Dash 4 Cash, I’ve been very fortunate the last four or five years to go for a couple of them and win a couple. I think we’ve won three or four of them, so it’s always a lot of fun and I can’t think of a better place to race for it than here at Bristol, where there’s always so much action and you don’t know who is gonna win until the last lap. We even saw that in the truck race the other night, so I appreciate XFINITY putting the Dash 4 Cash on. It’s great for our series; it’s great for our sport; it’s great for our team, sponsors, drivers; it’s always a lot of fun when you’re racing for that extra $100,000.”
YOU DON’T KNOW HOW MANY TIMES YOU’VE WON THE $100,000 BONUS? “Four of them, I think.”
ON THE CUP SIDE WE HERE ABOUT THE TEAMS HAVING THEIR BEST PIECE AT THE END OF THE YEAR. IS IT THAT WAY FOR THE XFINITY SERIES AS WELL? “I tell you what we did. We have a system at our race team with Roush Fenway, just like every team has, where if you run a car and it’s a good car it has to kind of go through a process. It goes back through the shop. If it needs any body work, chassis work done to it. If it needs to go to NASCAR and get re-inspected and re-certified it’ll do that. This is the actual car we ran a couple weeks ago at Indy and ran very well with and my guys really turn it around quick to bring it to Bristol because we’re running for the extra $100,000. It’s a newer car, which we’ve had some success with here lately. We had an old car scheduled to come to Bristol and I begged them and begged them to please – maybe have to work some extra hours and do some extra things to give us a better shot at winning that $100,000, so, yes, I think teams have certain cars and certain things that they try to line up and put into their possession for particular races that you go to.”
HAS YOUR FEEL FOR BRISTOL STAYED THE SAME THROUGHOUT YOUR CAREER OR HAS IT CHANGED? “What’s weird about Bristol is this track has changed so much. It’s nowhere near the same track it was in 2001. It’s not even the same track it was when I won here last in the XFINITY car in 2012. The old track you raced around the bottom, you had to worry about forward bite, your driving style and technique was so much different. Here in 2012 you had the groove that moved around to the middle and kind of to the top, but then when they re-ground the surface and it gave so much more grip up around the wall, now the groove is right up against the wall. So even if it’s the same Bristol, it’s still the half-mile track, the setups, the driving style, the feel that you have in the car is very, very different. So it would make it special if we were able to win on this newer style track with the ground top on it. It’s definitely a lot different feel than what it was even a couple years ago.”
ELLIOTT SADLER CONTINUED — WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT THE STRENGTH OF THE SERIES THAT THERE HAVE BEEN NINE DIFFERENT DRIVERS QUALIFY IN THE THREE DASH 4 CASH RACES? “I think it’s great. We hear it all the time wanting to know how healthy our sport is moving forward – drivers, young drives coming in, talented drivers coming in. I think it shows that a lot of the Cup-affiliated teams across the board have got some good shoes in their cars and I think that’s why so many different guys have qualified for the Dash 4 Cash for tonight and for this series for the whole season. We’re lucky enough to be a part of it. A couple of years ago it was the same three or four drivers in each Dash 4 Cash. This year it seems like it’s a little bit more of a widespread group, so that means everybody is more on an equal playing field than what they were four or five years ago. That’s what it shows to me, that there’s a little more depth in this series than what it was, which is good for the sport.”
HOW DO YOU BALANCE $100,000 BEING ON THE LINE, YOU’RE FIFTH IN POINTS AND YOU WANT TO WIN THE RACE? “It’s easy to prioritize this. You try to win the damn race and that takes care of everything else. Points to me right now, I don’t really care a flip about. It’s trying to win the race week in and week out, especially when you go to tracks that you feel you’ve got a good history and a good notebook and a good feeling about. You want to go to those tracks and win. If we win the race, we win $100,000. If we can’t win the race and we’re not in that situation, then we’re seeing who we’re racing against, but I think the 22 car is in it and I think they’ve led like the last 9,000 laps in a row here in the XFINITY race, so we’ve got our work cut out for us. We’re here to win the race. Everything else, let it just fall where it may.”
HOW WILL IT BE TO RACE AGAINST YOUR BROTHER AGAIN TONIGHT? “It’s cool. My brother loves this sport and I think he does a really good job. I’m biased, but I think he does a really good job covering it for the Truck Series. He puts a lot of heart and effort into it and knows what he’s talking about when he’s covering all the truck races from the pits, so when he gets a chance and an opportunity to race in these things it’s special to him. He loves it. He’s like a kid in the candy store this week. My parent get to come now because they get to watch us both race at the same time, so I know he’s gonna do the best job he possibly can for that team and I think he might have another one on the docket coming up later on in the year, but I know Bristol is special to him and I’m proud of him and happy for him and hopefully he’ll have a good night.”
HOW DO YOU THINK XFINITY HAS DONE IN ITS FIRST YEAR SPONSORING THE SERIES? “Let me tell you what they did, and I know I’ve said this before. The XFINITY TV go app is the coolest thing I’ve ever had on my phone or my kids’ iPads. It’s made all of our trips way more fun, so I think they’ve done a great job working with the drivers. I know I get phone calls all the time from them asking questions and suggestions and things that they’re doing and can they do better, and they really want to reach out to each and every fan that they can – not only here at the race tracks and the stands, but also at home. My biggest feedback to them is this XFINITY TV go app, that’s not a paid commercial for me. If you’ve got kids, that’s the coolest app you can ever have on your phone or your iPad, especially if you travel, so I think they’ve done great.”
ELLIOTT SADLER CONTINUED — A COUPLE WEEKS AGO THERE WERE REPORTS ABOUT YOUR FUTURE. WILL YOU BE BACK WITH ROUSH FENWAY AFTER THIS SEASON AND HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THAT WITH YOUR RACE TEAM? “How you deal with that, we’ve just got to go out and race. I’ve got a lot of good friends on this team and we’ve got to go out and try to put our best foot forward. I really want to win a race really bad over here. I want to win one for Jack. I really want to win one for Doug and everybody on that team. I saw the reports come out just like you did and the report was about 50/50 – 50 percent true and 50 percent not true. The true part was I had not signed and have not signed with anybody, so that part of the report was definitely true. The rest of it, I have no idea about. I don’t have anything to announce here today. We’re still working through some things for next year. I’ve told you guys this before, I want to be a part of this sport. I want to be competitive. I still think to this day that last five years there’s no other XFINITY regular that has more poles and more wins than I do and I want to keep that going. I want to stay competitive and stay up front. OneMain Financial is the longest running primary sponsor in the XFINITY Series, so they support this series a bunch, they support the NASCAR fans, they support these programs. They want to be in this sport for a long time and hopefully we’ll be able to do that.”
ON A TIMELINE? “There’s a lot of moving parts right now. There’s a lot of stuff going on right now in our sport. Just when you think something is gonna happen something else happens over in the corner. There’s a lot of stuff going on, so we’ll see.”
