In the Field: Elliott Sadler

As a friend of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s for a number of years now, being very close to him, and talking to him a lot as he's made the decision to go to Hendrick Motorsports next season, I'm very happy for him.

I think he feels like he's made a good decision, and that's good.

• Driver Page: Stats, videos, etc
• Store: Everything Elliott Sadler

But what I feel some people are leaving out is there's a real good driver looking for a job for 2008. Kyle Busch is an amazing driver and he is going to be a hot commodity for the 2008 season.

I know Ray, our owner here at Evernham Motorsports, has been very outspoken about getting him to come over here and we would love to have him as a teammate.

We're looking to expand Evernham Motorsports, and we would love to have somebody of a Kyle's caliber come and drive on our race team.

Junior making the call on where he's going closes one chapter, but it opens another. Kyle's only 22 years old and he's got a lot of great racing ahead of him, so whoever lands him will feel like they've done a great job for their team.

We're going to try. We're going to try and push for him to come over here and join the team of Kasey [Kahne], Scott [Riggs] and myself. We want to expand this to a four-car team and I think he'd be a great addition at Evernham Motorsports, if that's where he chooses to come.

But when you get back to Junior, what some people don't think about, whether it's the fans or the media, is that as a kid growing up and being a fan of this sport, whether it was racing go-karts or racing Late Model Stocks; we have dreams.

Everyone has dreams of what they want to be when they grow up -- and us, being racers -- you just want to be a champion. One way or another, you want to be a Nextel Cup champion, be successful and win races.

As careers go forward, guys are going to try to make decisions to put themselves in the right situation to make that happen.

That doesn't mean you're guaranteed anything -- but you feel like you want to make those decisions to put yourself in the best situation to win championships.

I think he feels like he's done that, because he's gotten with what he feels is one of the best teams in NASCAR. Those guys are going to stay on top and he feels that.

He feels like he's got a great chance at winning the championship with them.

If there's more pressure getting into equipment like that, with all the expectations that come with it, that's fine if you know there are more opportunities coming with that pressure.

When I made the change to come from Robert's [Yates] over to Evernham's to be Kasey's teammate that put pressure on me because I knew Kasey won six races and six poles last year.

But that's fine. If I've got the opportunity to win all that, you welcome that pressure. So if it's going to put more pressure on him to win a championship, now that he's at Hendrick, I think he'll welcome that every day of the week, as long as he thinks he's got a good opportunity to do so. (Continued)