 | | Elliott Sadler's crew hurries to get its driver back on track after his incident with Joe Nemechek. Credit: CIA Stock Photo |
By Dave Rodman, NASCAR.COM
November 1, 2004
11:18 AM EST (16:18 GMT)
HAMPTON, Ga. -- An accident on pit road Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway probably cost Elliott Sadler a chance at a decent finish in the inaugural Chase for the Nextel Cup. On a green-flag pit cycle at about the race's midpoint, Sadler's No. 38 M&M's Ford collided with Joe Nemechek's No. 01 U.S. Army Chevrolet as Sadler entered his pit box, which was located just beyond Nemechek's.  |  | BASS PRO SHOPS MBNA 500 | |
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Sadler, who was running sixth at the time of the stop, suffered a broken transmission and steering system on his Robert Yates Racing car. More than the problems with the car, Sadler said he suffered a broken heart. "I'm upset for everyone that works so hard week in and week out because we started off so strong and drove to the front," Sadler said after finishing 36th, 63 laps down. "It hurts when you have something that avoidable take us out of contention for a win." Sadler did pick up 18 points on Busch, whose car blew up after 51 laps, relegating him to 42nd position, but missed an opportunity to jump up much closer in the standings, with three races remaining. Sadler is eighth in the Chase, 237 points behind Busch, but 139 points behind fifth-place Dale Earnhardt Jr. The accident -- the second in as many weeks between Sadler and Nemechek -- forced Sadler's crew to work on his car for a number of laps with it parked in its pit stall, perpendicular to pit wall rather than parallel. "We were just trying to get to pit road under green and made contact with (Nemechek) for the second week in a row," Sadler said. "It was a pit road miscue, but he hit me hard enough to break the transmission (and) we had to come behind the wall to fix the steering and transmission and lost about 50 laps." When the accident occurred, Nemechek apparently told his team to tell him when other cars were entering the pits around him when he was leaving; but by the time Nemechek finished fourth in the race, he was happy enough with his finish that he did not mention the incident after the race. A year ago at Atlanta, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Ryan Newman were racing for a top-five position late in the race when the trailing Earnhardt made contact with Newman's leading car, knocking it into the wall and out of the race. |  | | Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished 33rd on Sunday after his incident with Carl Edwards. Credit: Autostock |
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Late Sunday, Earnhardt was in front of Carl Edwards, racing for third, with Newman next in line on the track, though two laps down in 17th. Newman, though, experienced déjà vu in reverse when he watched the pair make contact, wrecking Earnhardt and relegating him to 33rd. "It looked to me like Junior tried going up, and Carl didn't give him any room," Newman said. "I don't blame Carl -- he was racing for a position." Newman found himself in trouble Sunday thanks to an improperly balanced tire. "We had a left front tire that was four ounces out of balance, which is pretty big," Newman said. "It was shaking pretty bad, and we didn't know what it was, so we just decided to pit and play if safe. It was probably the right thing to do." Newman, who led 58 of the first 63 laps, never challenged again, though. "We fought the balance a little bit after that," Newman said. "I think we had one of the fastest racecars, but it was just a little too little, too late. It was a good points day but not a great points day (and) it could have been a great points day. "If we can do in the next three races what Jimmie Johnson did in the last three, then we'll be in pretty good shape." Mark Martin was so focused on dominating the Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500 that he barely noticed that Roush Racing teammates Kurt Busch and Matt Kenseth had fallen out of the race due to engine failures. |  | | Mark Martin led 227 laps Sunday. Credit: Autostock |
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"I felt like when Kurt broke his engine that it was kind of how luck goes," said Martin, who finished last in the Daytona 500 due to an engine failure and had two engines fail in the first 14 races this season. "I felt like he was having some of the even-up luck that I had early in the year (when) I broke several engines. "I never felt like ours was gonna let us down. We had incredible horsepower and we've had terrific reliability since I showed them I could break their engines. They've gone back and fixed them (because) I demonstrated that what they had wasn't strong enough for me. "It was strong enough for the rest of the guys, but it wasn't strong enough for me, so they've gone back and fixed the stuff and now it's just incredible -- horsepower and reliability." Jamie McMurray, who failed to make the Chase for the Cup by just 15 points, has accumulated the second-highest point total in the seven Chase races; solidifying his 11th position in the standings, which will be rewarded on the stage at the Nextel Cup awards ceremony in New York City. |  | | Jamie McMurray |
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Busch has the best point total in the seven races, 1,032, but McMurray has accumulated 1,024, thanks to a string that includes top-10 finishes in 10 of the past 11 races, including an eighth on Sunday. "That's another top-10 finish," McMurray said. "When you look back and think what might have been if we'd qualified for The Chase.... Oh well, we've got a good hold on 11th place and we'll see if we can't kick it up a few notches and win one of these last three races." McMurray now leads 12th-place Jarrett -- who finished 15th Sunday -- by 221 points. "We just never could get the car off the corner," Jarrett said. "We could make it worse, but we never did make it better. We kept adjusting, but it just wasn't a very good day (because) it just seemed that everything we did wasn't any better. "We'll have to go evaluate it a little bit. This is the same car that was loose all night at Charlotte, so we'll have to look at the car." John Andretti joined a new team two races ago that was 52nd in owner points coming into Atlanta. But his No. 14 Ford has qualified twice in the top 20 when entries of more than 50 cars at Lowe's Motor Speedway and Atlanta sent home several full-time cars that weren't fast enough. |  | | John Andretti Credit: Autostock |
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Andretti has finished 22nd and 25th, at Atlanta and was thrilled at the team's start, which is lined up to run the final three races this season and then a full schedule in 2005. "You want to do well and I think we did OK," Andretti said. "We haven't tested enough with race stuff and I haven't run all this year enough on the mile and a halves to see what these guys are doing. "It's like, we need to try everything (to see what works), so it's (a case of) catching up a little bit, (but) we're gonna get better and better. We've got two full races in, so now we just need to keep doing that and the results will start coming." Andretti said he lost three laps due to pitting at the wrong time, when cautions came out. He was caught twice on pit road by cautions and received a penalty for speeding on pit road to try to remain on the lead lap that he said cost another lap. Not losing those laps, he could have finished as high as 17th. "We lost three laps to nothing other than we were on pit road," Andretti said. "Three laps are worth something (because) with three laps we would have had a decent result." Johnson will match a mark set by his Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Jeff Gordon, if he can win his fourth consecutive race this weekend in the Checker Auto Parts 500 at Phoenix International Raceway. Gordon was the last driver to win three consecutive races, the final two races of 1998 and the first race in 1999; and Gordon won four consecutive races in his No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet in 1998, in mid-summer at Pocono, Indianapolis, Watkins Glen and Michigan. Kurt Busch said on Saturday that the Chase format was definitely playing in his Roush Racing team's favor, even before he knew about Sunday's engine failure. |  | | Kurt Busch says his team has had two different philosophies this season. Credit: Autostock |
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"I believe that's what's given us the upper hand to have this points advantage and to not have any problems with our car mechanically is we have laid out everything on the table -- we haven't left anything behind," he said of the format. "If you try this type of pace, I believe, for 36 races, you'd burn yourself out -- there would be people disgruntled with one another. "Right now, we feel like we've done the best job we possibly can with racing as hard as we can, with building cars as quick as we can and testing as hard as we can with the people that we have. "We looked at a regular season of 26 races -- pace yourself. We looked at 10 races as a playoff -- pace yourself for that." | 
