Elliott Sadler, left, and Brad Parrott have been a formidable duo since their pairing in August 2003. Credit: Autostock

Sadler, Parrott pairing paying off for Yates

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- Elliott Sadler's primary passions outside his job are deer hunting and golf.

And when not driving his race car, Sadler's everyday vehicle has to be "something big and bulky and slow," like a truck or sport utility vehicle. He hasn't had a sports car since he was 16 and wrapped his first car, a brand new black Ford Mustang GT, around a tree while driving 95 mph through the neighborhood.

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These days, Sadler only worries about being fast where it counts -- on the track behind the wheel of the No. 38 M&Ms Ford.

Sadler was somewhat of a surprise participant in the inaugural NASCAR Nextel Cup 10-driver championship chase last season, having never been higher than 20th in points his five full seasons before then. Now he's driven to prove that his sudden success wasn't a fluke.

"I'm feeling a lot of pressure, a bunch. Nobody's putting it on me but me, because I do want to show everybody we have a great team," Sadler said. "We know people have us under the spyglass wondering if we can do it again because we were a surprise. ... We've shown that we can be a top-10 team. We just want to show everybody that we are for real, that we can do it again."

The 30-year-old Sadler is off to an impressive start through six races in 2005. He is third in points, 182 behind leader Jimmie Johnson and 22 behind Greg Biffle, after consecutive top-10 finishes at short tracks Bristol and Martinsville. He has finished lower than 11th only once while completing all but two laps.

Now Sadler gets to go to his favorite track, the 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway, where he got one of his two wins last year. He even saved his best car, the same one he drove to Victory Lane last spring, for the Samsung/RadioShack 500 on Sunday.

Sadler's surge of success has come since moving from the Wood Brothers team to Robert Yates Racing in 2003 and being paired with crew chief Todd Parrott.

	Credit: Gavin Lawrence/Getty Images
	Inside the Numbers Robert Yates Racing at Texas Starts W T-5 T-10 DNF 16 2 5 6 4 • Average start: 8.6 • Average finish: 17.9

The demanding chief spent almost 10 years with Rusty Wallace, and was with Dale Jarrett in 1999 for Yates' only NASCAR championship. He's been a good match for Sadler.

"He's pushed me to a different level," Sadler said. "Every time I try to explain something to him, he asks me another question, another question, and he keeps running in circles until pinpointing what we think the problem is. I wish I would have had him when I was 20 or 21 years old. I would be a lot better race car driver now."

Parrott spent some time as general manager of the Yates team before returning to the pit box with Sadler in August 2003. The crew chief and driver used the end of that season to get to know each other.

"He was going to a race team that had won races, been successful, and he had to perform," Parrott said. "On the other hand, I was coming back from some time off and I had to prove to myself and the people that I could still do it. So we both have had a point to prove."

Just nine races into his first Yates season, before Parrott joined him, Sadler had five top-10 finishes and was 10th in points. But he then had three consecutive finishes of 33rd or worse to drop to 20th, and never recovered.

With Parrott all last season, Sadler won twice and had 14 top-10 finishes. He made it into the final 10-race championship chase, a task he thought would be the hardest part in NASCAR's new system.

"Man, were we sadly mistaken," he said. "That 10-race format is absolutely the hardest thing that a race car driver can possibly go through. It's stressful with the lack of sleep, or no sleep at all. I was putting the full court press on in a lot of places that we probably shouldn't."

	ALSO Storm troopers, a wookiee, Darth Vader and the Yellow M&M'S Brand Character M-Vader are all potential sights at Phoenix International Raceway on April 23. Add Nextel Cup drivers and teammates Elliott Sadler and Dale Jarrett and the Star Wars Chocolate M-Pire is complete.  •   Complete story, click here •   Superstore: Star Wars gear

The format, which sent the championship contenders into the final 10 races separated by just 45 points, was new to everyone. There were plenty of lessons learned.

"We went in there with guns blazing ... and basically we fell on our face the last four or five races," Parrott said. "Basically, we have learned as a team that we've got to be around at the end to be closer to the front in points."

Sadler was up to fourth in the standings halfway through the 10-race chase. He then crashed at Martinsville to finish 32nd, and came across the line better than that only one more time (in 23rd place). He was ninth in the final standings, 482 points behind champion Kurt Busch.

What hasn't changed is the approach in the first 26 races.

"We're going to try to do the same thing this year in the first 26 that we did last year," Sadler said. "That's run every single lap, race the racetrack, stay out of trouble and see every checkered flag that we can."

So far, things are going just as planned.