DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- There's one thing that racing has taught me, and that's to look carefully ahead at every corner you come to, because you never know if the trailer truck coming around it will be on your side of the road or not.

We came to Daytona for Speedweeks overflowing with as much optimism as everyone else -- and even though the events that happened there were a momentary punch in the gut, we left after the Daytona 500 just as optimistic about the rest of the season as we'd felt coming in.

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That was particularly special for me personally, because I came to Florida knowing that I'm happier now than I've ever been in my life. I'm 31 years old and all I've known how to do is focus on racing.

I've never really understood how to get other things involved in my life, whether it was other businesses, or even things other people would consider to be important in their personal lives.

With the attention I've paid to my racing career, everything else has always been sitting on the back burner.

At least, that was the way it was until I met someone very special toward the end of last year. And man my life has changed a lot, to the point I've changed all my priorities around.

Of course, racing is still No. 1 to me and it's still very important, but now I have someone to share that with. So my personal life is great.

She's from my hometown and I've known her and her family for years. I was hanging around and watching my sister and sister-in-law play softball and she's on their softball team.

We just started talking one time and just kind of hit it off. She's just an amazing person.

I'm not the most optimistic person in the world -- the glass has always been half-empty for me -- but for some reason it's half-full right now and I have her to thank for that.

Things have been on an upswing and things have been a lot of fun. In fact, I didn't think life could be this much fun and man, it's been a blast.

My nieces love her, because she taught them all in swimming lessons and they all know her. Sometimes I think they like her more than they like their Uncle Elliott, right now.

And the funniest thing is, you know I have more than 30 hunting dogs, beagles and such -- and she loves 'em. And they love her, too, because she spoils them. She wants to feed them all the time and make sure they're nice and warm.

You know, we've had some cold nights lately, like we did while we were in Daytona Beach for Speedweeks, and sometimes I think she worries about them more than she worries about me. She's been a great mom to the dogs, so far.

But anyway, I spent a lot of time at home in Emporia, Va., this past winter -- more than I've ever managed to spend there before in the past. We had a great hunting season and I'm coming back refreshed and ready to go!

I spent a lot of time with my brother and sister and my mom and dad, and all my nieces; which I think has been great, too, because I've surrounded myself with people that know and care about me and I think that's gotten me in a great mood to start off the 2007 season.

Nothing that happened during Speedweeks changed that a lick.

I think, overall, I've started thinking more about things and have matured, honestly. A lot of racecar drivers do different business ventures just to diversify themselves and to have something to fall back on, if they need to.

I've had several different business opportunities in my career and I've never taken advantage of them before. Maybe I wasn't mature enough, or I thought I didn't have the experience, or the time to devote to it.

But now, at 31 years old, I'm starting to seriously look at what I'm going to do after racing. You know, I'm going to race really hard for 10 or 11 more years and then after that I need to find something to do after racing.

So I've gone into business and bought into two of my brother, Hermie's dealerships that we're going to co-own. Elliott Sadler Dodge and Elliott Sadler Ford will be side-by-side in Franklin, Va.

That's no coincidence, because as you know I've driven Fords in the Cup Series and now I'm driving Dodges for Ray Evernham.

That's a big part of the reason to go with those two brands, because really, I know the most about the Dodge and Ford vehicles than I do anything else that's on the market. And my dad knows more about American-made products than anything else.

It's just what we've done for so long. My dad has been involved in car dealerships for 40 years in a big way, and pretty early on Hermie got involved with that business as well.

I always kinda maybe wanted to do it, but never really knew if I wanted to and maybe was never going to be focused enough to do it. But now I think I understand the business a little bit more and even more important than that, I understand what I want out of it.

So I've bought those two dealerships and they should be ready to go in two to three months. I think it'll be a lot of fun to work in the family business.

Even more than that, I'm looking forward to hiring somebody to run them for me, because I'm on the road so much. But all the same, I'm really looking forward to that part of my life, also.

I'll tell you about one thing we're doing there that's really cool, though -- even though I stole it from Mark Martin, so I have to give him some props.

We're building a replica of Bristol Motor Speedway's Victory Lane at the dealership, so if you, as a customer buy a vehicle from us we'll pull it into Victory Lane and take pictures of you and the car as if you were in Victory Lane with me at Bristol -- which of course is where I won my first Cup race.

That's something a little different that not every car dealership can offer, so that makes it fun for everyone at the dealership and we hope it's fun for our customers.

It's interesting when you talk about growing and learning, but I've learned a lot over the last couple years when Dale Jarrett was my teammate. He taught me a lot about how he treats his fans and how he treats his customers at his dealerships.

I've learned a lot about that and it's something I want to share with my fans, as well.

I'll tell you what. It's no coincidence, either, to be talking about Victory Lane when you look at where we are with our No. 19 Dodge Charger at Evernham Motorsports -- because it's going to happen.

I thought I had a strong race team before I came to Daytona for Speedweeks -- but what they showed me in the Daytona 500 and in the days leading up to it proves to me we can achieve even more than we had imagined.

It's not a matter of just wanting to get there, or trying to. I really think we have the great tools and great possibilities of having a really successful season.

I think we're going to be the biggest surprise in the Nextel Cup Series this season. I read a number of articles before I got to Daytona, and nobody's really picking us to do anything as far as the Chase for the Nextel Cup goes.

And that's great. That's great bulletin board material for us to put up back at the shop -- though it's not like we need any extra incentives. Other than being picked to win the Daytona 500 by a couple guys, we're completely under the radar -- and I think that, in the end, the way we were at the end of the 500 shows they were right.

So we feel like we've got some great, talented guys on my team. And our teammate, Kasey Kahne, showed what you could do in Evernham equipment by winning six races and six poles in his Dodge Chargers last season.

And this year, we think that we can do the same because we've got the same driving styles and we've definitely got all of our cars changed over now to where they're just like Kasey's and Scott Riggs' No. 10 Chargers.

We've got great possibilities to work together as teammates -- better than any of us have ever had before -- because we all like each other very much. I think we're going to have a great season.

One thing Ray Evernham is going to do is he's going to be successful. He stays ahead of the learning curve and he's really up on his engineering right now.

For our group, I love my guys on my race team. They work their butts off -- really hard. We took a shot at Daytona by losing our team director, Josh Browne.

He'll be back on the pit box for Vegas but until then we have a lot of depth in our organization and Josh is extremely involved, back at the shop, in making sure we have a fast racecar when we unload this weekend in California.

Ray made the right decision to give Kirk Almquist the responsibilities of our team director as well as continuing as car director for the first two races, and the rest of the guys stepped up and rallied to have a great sixth place finish at Daytona.

For me, as the leader of the bunch and the one with the most experience and the one who's been in the sport the longest, I feel like I can help these guys with some stuff that's going on, and Daytona was a start for that.

So I think we'll have a great season. I swear I just can't see it any other way.

I mean, my guys are pumped and we've definitely got a ton of resources. I have one of those funny feelings again, like I did in 2004 when we were competitive and we were part of the Chase.

We've got great equipment this year, Ray's given us the major tools and I think we can do it. I've been there and done that -- I've been on both sides. I've made the Chase and I've just missed it. I think I've learned from both experiences.

I think we're going to have a great points year, we're going to win some races and lead some laps and have some fun, so enjoy the ride.